Fears grow for Rafah as Israel-Hamas war rages on 200th day

People rush to landing humanitarian aid packages dropped over the northern Gaza Strip on April 23, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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People rush to landing humanitarian aid packages dropped over the northern Gaza Strip on April 23, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 24 April 2024
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Fears grow for Rafah as Israel-Hamas war rages on 200th day

Fears grow for Rafah as Israel-Hamas war rages on 200th day
  • Citing Egyptian officials briefed on the Israeli plans, the Wall Street Journal said Israel was planning to move civilians from Rafah to nearby Khan Yunis over a period of two to three weeks
  • Israel has killed at least 34,183 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: The Israel-Hamas war entered its 200th day on Tuesday as aid groups warned that Israeli plans to invade the southern city of Rafah where most Gazans have taken refuge would create an “apocalyptic situation.”
Fears have been rising that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will soon follow through on repeated threats to send troops into Rafah, where 1.5 million people have sought shelter, many in makeshift encampments.
“Everybody seems to be on a countdown to war across the largest displacement camp on Earth, which is Rafah,” Norwegian Refugee Council chief Jan Egeland told AFP.
Egeland warned that a ground assault on Rafah would be an “apocalyptic situation” and that humanitarian groups “are completely in the dark on how to mitigate this countdown to a catastrophe.”
Also on Tuesday, the United Nations rights office said it was “horrified” at reports of mass graves found at the Gaza Strip’s two biggest hospitals after Israeli sieges and raids.
Israel has repeatedly targeted Gazan medical facilities during the war, accusing Hamas of using them as command centers and to hold hostages abducted on October 7. Hamas denies the accusation.
Over the past three days, Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said nearly 340 bodies were uncovered of people killed and buried by Israeli forces at the Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Israel’s army responded by saying that claims it had buried Palestinian bodies were “baseless and unfounded,” without directly addressing allegations that Israeli troops were behind the killings.
The army said that “corpses buried by Palestinians” had been examined by Israeli troops searching for hostages and then “returned to their place.”
UN rights chief Volker Turk called for an “independent” probe into the deaths at Nasser and Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospitals, noting the “special protection” awarded to medical facilities under international law.
UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said some of the bodies found at Nasser were allegedly “found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes,” adding that efforts were underway to corroborate the reports.
AFP images from the scene showed numerous bodies under white shrouds in front of the bombed-out Nasser Hospital.
The White House said it would discuss the subject with Israel.
“Obviously scenes of mass graves in general are deeply concerning but I don’t have anything that can confirm the veracity of those,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

The Israeli army carried out intense shelling overnight of Gaza City, AFP correspondents and witnesses said.
Shelling and loud explosions were heard in southwest Gaza and Khan Yunis city, while strikes hit the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps in central Gaza.
The war began with an unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 that resulted in the death of around 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
In retaliation, Israel launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,183 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
The Israeli army announced the death of a soldier in Gaza, raising its toll to 261 since the ground operation began.
Israel estimates that 129 of the roughly 250 people abducted during the Hamas attack remain in Gaza, including 34 who the military says are dead.
Public pressure has mounted on Netanyahu’s government to strike a truce deal that would secure the release of the remaining hostages.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, said that “after 200 days, the enemy remains trapped in the sands of Gaza” and the hostages would “most likely” not return home soon.
At a rally near Netanyahu’s home in the coastal town of Caesarea, protesters including relatives of hostages set fire to a symbolic Passover table at the start of the week-long Jewish holiday on Monday.
Dalit Shtivi, whose son Idan was kidnapped on October 7, said she was struggling to cope without him during Passover, also known as the “holiday of freedom.”
“It’s so hard. I cannot explain the pain. I cannot... think of celebrating without him,” she said.

Outcry has been growing around the world against Israel’s offensive, which has turned vast areas of Gaza to rubble and sparked fears of famine.
Hundreds of students have been arrested in recent days at pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the campuses of prominent universities in the United States, Israel’s top ally and military supplier.
In Gaza, the United Nations says “multiple obstacles” continue to impede delivery of urgently needed aid for Gazans desperate for food, water, shelter and medicine.
But Netanyahu has vowed to press on with a planned offensive on Rafah, on the besieged territory’s border with Egypt.
Citing Egyptian officials briefed on the Israeli plans, the Wall Street Journal said Israel was planning to move civilians from Rafah to nearby Khan Yunis over a period of two to three weeks.
Satellite images shared by Maxar Technologies showed tent camps that had recently been set up in that area.
The Journal reported that Israel would then send troops into Rafah gradually, targeting areas where Hamas’s leaders are thought to be hiding, in a military operation that would last six weeks.

The European Union’s humanitarian chief Janez Lenarcic called on international donors to fund the United Nations agency UNRWA, which has been central to aid operations in Gaza.
His comment came after a much-awaited independent report found that “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence” for its claim that UNRWA employs “terrorists.”
The report did find “neutrality-related issues,” such as agency staff sharing biased posts on social media.
After the report was released, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini called for an investigation into the “blatant disregard” for UN operations in Gaza, adding that 180 of the agency’s staff have been killed since the war began.
While some countries have renewed funding for the agency, the US and Britain are among the hold-outs.
The White House would “have to see real progress” before it restores funding, Kirby said.
The Gaza war has triggered violence across the region, with deadly cross-border exchanges on Tuesday between the Israeli army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
The Iran-backed Lebanese group said it launched drones at northern Israeli army bases in retaliation for a strike deep into Lebanon that killed a Hezbollah fighter.
A woman and a girl were killed in an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon later on Tuesday, local rescuers and official media said.
 

 


Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan

Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan
Updated 57 min 34 sec ago
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Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan

Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan
  • “The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said
  • Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque

JERUSALEM: Israel said Thursday that it will implement what it called “safety restrictions” at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins over the weekend.
During Ramadan, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians come to pray at Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam located in East Jerusalem — a sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel.
This year, Ramadan coincides with a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which has largely halted fighting after a devastating war that left tens of thousands dead in the Palestinian territory.
“The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said in an online briefing to journalists.
Last year, amid the Gaza war, Israeli authorities imposed restrictions on visitors coming to Al-Aqsa, particularly on those Palestinians coming from the occupied West Bank.
Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque compound “for security reasons,” while thousands of Israeli police officers were deployed across Jerusalem’s Old City.
Mencer indicated that precautions would be taken again this year.
“What we cannot, of course, and no country would countenance is people seeking to foment violence and attacks on anyone else,” he said, without detailing this year’s police deployment.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is a symbol of Palestinian national identity.
By longstanding convention, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray in the compound, which they revere as the site of their second temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
In recent years, growing numbers of Jewish ultranationalists have defied the rules, including far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who publicly prayed there while serving as national security minister in 2023 and 2024.
The Israeli government has said repeatedly that it intends to uphold the status quo at the compound but Palestinian fears about its future have made it a flashpoint for violence.
Last year, Israel allowed Muslims to worship at Al-Aqsa in the same numbers as in previous year despite the war raging in Gaza.


Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop

Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop
Updated 27 February 2025
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Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop

Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop
  • 13 people including a police officer were wounded
  • Israel’s first responders treated injured people at the site of the incident

JERUSALEM: Israeli police said a Palestinian man rammed a car into a bus stop in the north of the country on Thursday, wounding 13 civilians in an incident they were treating as a “terror” attack.
“At 16:17 today, Israel Police’s emergency dispatch received reports of a ramming attack at Karkur Junction, where a vehicle struck multiple civilians waiting at a bus stop,” police said in a statement.
Israel’s first responders, Magen David Adom, said a team treated injured people at the site of the incident, including a 17-year old girl who was in critical condition.
Police said 13 people, including a police officer, were wounded, and that two of them were in “serious” condition.
The suspect was a “53-year-old Palestinian from the Jenin area, (who) was residing in Israel unlawfully with his family,” the police statement said.
“The circumstances of his presence in Israel are under investigation,” the police said, adding that “preliminary findings indicate that he deliberately targeted civilians waiting at a bus stop.”
Israel’s military launched earlier this year a major offensive in the north of the occupied West Bank, deploying tanks into the area for the first time in 20 years.
Dubbed “Iron Wall” by the Israeli military, the operation came days after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza.
The raids have spanned multiple refugee camps near the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas.
Military operations are commonplace in Jenin’s refugee camp, a bastion of Palestinian militancy.


More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says

More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says
Updated 27 February 2025
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More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says

More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says
  • Grave sites identified using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents

DAMASCUS: More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture or maltreatment at a site that was widely feared, according to a report to be published Thursday tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites.

In the report, the Syria Justice and Accountability Center said it identified the grave sites by using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents photographed at the military airport in the Damascus suburb of Mezzeh after the ouster of President Bashar Assad in December.

Some sites were on the airport grounds. Others were across Damascus.

Two of the sites, one on the Mezzeh airport property and another at a cemetery in Najha, show clear signs of long trenches dug during periods consistent with witness testimony from SJAC.

Shadi Haroun, one of the report’s authors, said he was among the captives. Held over several months in 2011-2012 for organizing protests, he described daily interrogations with physical and psychological torture intended to force him into baseless confessions.

Death came in many forms, he said.

Although detainees saw nothing except their cell walls or the interrogation room, they could hear “occasional shootings, shot by shot, every couple of days.”

Then there were the injuries inflicted by their tormentors.

“A small wound on the foot of one of the detainees, caused by a whipping he received during torture, was left unsterilized or untreated for days, which gradually turned into gangrene and his condition worsened until it reached the point of amputation of the entire foot,” Haroun said, describing a cellmate’s plight.

In addition to obtaining the documents, SJAC and the Association for the Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison interviewed 156 survivors and eight former members of air force intelligence, Syria’s security service that was tasked with the surveillance, imprisonment and killing of regime critics.

The new government has issued a decree forbidding former regime officials from speaking publicly and none were available to comment.

“Although some of the graves mentioned in the report had not been discovered before, the discovery itself does not surprise us, as we know that there are more than 100,000 missing persons in Assad’s prisons who did not come out during the days of liberation in early December,” said a colonel in the new government’s Interior Ministry who identified himself by his military alias, Abu Baker.

“Discovering the fates of those missing persons and searching for more graves is one of the greatest legacies left by the Assad regime,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests spiraled into a full-scale war. Both Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have long been accused by rights groups, foreign governments and war-crimes prosecutors of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.


Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development

Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development
Updated 27 February 2025
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Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development

Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development
  • As Oman’s largest sustainable urban development, Yiti integrates renewable energy, food production, water and waste recycling, smart mobility and climate-resilient infrastructure to create a “future-ready” community

MUSCAT: The Sustainable City — Yiti, Oman’s flagship sustainable development and the pioneering net zero emissions community, signed a strategic partnership on Thursday with Ahli Islamic Oman bank.

The partnership was formalized at a signing ceremony held on-site at The Sustainable City — Yiti, attended by senior executives from Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman, along with key stakeholders.

As Oman’s largest sustainable urban development, Yiti integrates renewable energy, food production, water and waste recycling, smart mobility and climate-resilient infrastructure to create a “future-ready” community.

With 96 percent of its infrastructure already completed, the project is progressing toward its full realization by 2026, bringing together residential, commercial, hospitality and educational spaces designed to advance sustainable living.

“With an investment of nearly $1 billion, we are redefining the real estate landscape by integrating sustainability, innovation, and long-term value creation. This collaboration with Ahli reinforces our commitment to responsible growth, ensuring that we deliver a world-class, net-zero emissions community that aligns with Oman’s Vision 2040 and sets a benchmark for sustainable cities worldwide,” said Mohammed Al-Ghufaili, COO of Oman Tourism Development Company (OMRAN) Group and a board member of Yiti.

Yousuf Al-Rawahi, head of Ahli Islamic Oman, said: “Our collaboration with The Sustainable City — Yiti reflects the overall commitment and endeavor to support Sharia-compliant and sustainable investments that align with Oman Vision 2040.

“By providing the needed financial solutions, we empower individuals and businesses to be part of a groundbreaking net-zero emissions community. Together, we are fostering a responsible urban grown society, while ensuring long-term value creation, and contributing to a more sustainable future for many in the Sultanate of Oman.”

Developed by Diamond Developers in collaboration with OMRAN, Yiti spans nearly one million square meters along the Gulf of Oman coastline, and offers smart infrastructure, low-carbon living and sustainable tourism.

The development features a mix of residential, commercial, hospitality, educational spaces, two hotels, alongside essential community infrastructure such as schools, a nursery, an equestrian center, an indoor sports complex and outdoor leisure areas.

It has been designed to achieve net zero emissions by 2040, as a key contributor to Oman’s environmental and economic transformation.


Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved

Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved
Updated 27 February 2025
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Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved

Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved
  • “All groups must lay down their arms and PKK must dissolve itself,” he said in a declaration
  • His words were read out by a delegation of lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish DEM party

ISTANBUL: Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan on Thursday called for his Kurdish militant group to lay down its weapons and dissolve itself in a landmark declaration read out in Istanbul.
“All groups must lay down their arms and PKK must dissolve itself,” he said in a declaration drawn up in his cell on Imrali prison island where he has been held in solitary confinement since 1999.
The call came four months after Ankara offered an olive branch to the 75-year-old who founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has cost tens of thousands of lives.
His words were read out by a delegation of lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish DEM party who visited him earlier on Thursday.
“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” he said.
Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999, there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed which erupted in 1984 and has cost more than 40,000 lives.
The last round of talks collapsed amid violence in 2015.
After that, there was no contact until October when hard-line nationalist MHP leader Devlet Bahceli offered Ocalan a surprise peace gesture if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.