Two people wounded in attack in Israeli mall, police say
Updated 03 July 2024
Reuters
JERUSALEM: Two people were wounded in a stabbing attack in an Israeli mall on Wednesday, Israeli police said.
Police called it a suspected terror attack and said the attacker was killed. The mall is in Karmiel, northern Israel.
Israeli medics said they were treating two men in their 20s, one in a very serious condition and the other fully conscience.
Video footage from the scene that was shared on social media and seen by Reuters showed two men lying motionless on the floor of the mall while people tried to give them urgent medical care.
At least one of the men receiving care was wearing a green uniform, the video showed. A third man, not in uniform, was lying motionless a short distance away. No one was administering care to him.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Israel is conducting a military offensive in Gaza in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, already on the rise before the war in Gaza, has escalated further, with stepped-up Israeli military raids, settler violence and Palestinian street attacks.
In January, a Palestinian ramming attack in central Israel killed one woman and injured 12 others.
Syrian air defenses confront ‘aggression’ in central region
Updated 5 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO: Syrian air defenses confronted an “aggression” targeting multiple locations in Syria’s central region, state media said late on Sunday, following reports of an explosion heard in the same area.
Usually arid areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been drenched in floods caused by massive rainfall since Friday, officials told AFP Sunday
Updated 6 min 6 sec ago
AFP
OUARZAZATE, Morocco: Moroccan authorities on Sunday told AFP that 11 people died and nine were missing in flooding caused by an “exceptional” climate phenomenon in southern areas.
Interior ministry spokesman Rachid Khalfi said authorities recorded an initial “toll of 11 deaths” after “heavy thunderstorms” that hit “17 prefectures and provinces in the kingdom.”
Among the victims, seven died in the province of Tata, some 740 kilometers south of Rabat, and two in Errachidia, almost 500 kilometers east of Marrakech, according to Khalfi.
He said one of the victims had foreign citizenship, without providing further details.
Khalfi also said “the volume of precipitation recorded in two days is equivalent to that which these regions normally experience during an entire year.”
The floods also caused the collapse of 40 homes and damaged 93 roads, and “affected electricity, drinking water and telephone networks,” he added.
Usually arid areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been drenched in floods caused by massive rainfall since Friday, officials told AFP Sunday.
Areas in southern Morocco have been affected “by an extremely unstable tropical air mass,” the spokesman for the Moroccan General Directorate of Meteorology, Lhoussaine Youabd, told AFP.
This “led to the formation of unstable and violent clouds” that caused massive rainfall, he said, describing the phenomenon as “exceptional.”
As a result, the Ouarzazate region received 47 millimeters of water in three hours, and Tagounite, near the Algerian border, some 170 millimeters, according to the Moroccan weather service.
“We haven’t seen such rain for about 10 years,” Omar Gana, an Ouarzazate local, told AFP.
The heavy rains hit regions of Morocco that have been suffering from drought for at least six years.
In a previous toll, Algerian civil defense said one person died in Illizi, some 1,900 kilometers south of Algiers, and one was missing in flooding in the south.
Later in the day, it gave a total of two people missing, in El Bayadh and Tamanrasset.
It also said it had rescued several families trapped by flooded rivers in the south.
Videos posted on social media showed that some areas in the Sahara desert were drenched. In Morocco’s Ouarzazate, entire streets were flooded.
Morocco has been experiencing severe water stress after six consecutive years of drought, shrinking dam levels to less than 28 percent of capacity by the end of August.
West Bank escalation signals potential for a multifront regional conflict
Deadly Israeli military operations and Jewish settler attacks drive unrest in an already volatile occupied territory
Violence shows no sign of ebbing despite elimination of several militant commanders by Israeli security forces
Updated 5 min 33 sec ago
Nadia Al-Faour
DUBAI: Israeli military raids, settler attacks and a vicious cycle of violence have claimed the lives of more than 662 Palestinians and 24 Israelis in the West Bank since Oct. 7, raising the specter of a new active front in a regional conflict.
The West Bank has long been a center of unrest, but recent events have led to unprecedented volatility, with the Israeli government stepping up military operations in the area, including large-scale raids by soldiers backed by armored vehicles and bulldozers in Jenin, Tulkarm and other areas.
One recent raid at a refugee camp in the city of Jenin, which houses more than 4,000 Palestinians, involved hundreds of Israeli troops and armored vehicles. Simultaneous raids were launched in Tulkarm, Tubas, Nablus and Ramallah.
The Israeli army withdrew from Jenin and the refugee camp on Friday after the 10-day operation, which left 36 dead across the occupied West Bank, witnesses said. Residents who had fled began returning to their homes in the camp.
Israeli officials said 14 militants were killed and at least 25 arrested over the course of the Jenin assault, which camp residents say has led to the blockage of essential aid. One Israeli soldier was killed in the operation.
Bulldozers tear up a street during an Israeli raid in the center of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on September 2, 2024. (AFP)
Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the ongoing war in Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have acknowledged the loss of at least 14 fighters. Since Oct. 7, Israeli troops have arrested some 5,000 Palestinians across the West Bank.
“Operation Summer Camps” was the largest incursion since the early 2000s, when the Second Intifada, or uprising, took place. Authorities said the raids are part of a strategy to prevent Iranian-backed militant groups from launching attacks on Israeli citizens.
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, described the roundup of terrorist suspects as “mowing the lawn” but said the threat to Israel would only be fully neutralized once its forces “pull out the roots.”
“The rise of terror in Judea and Samaria is an issue that we need to be focused on every minute,” Gallant said during a meeting with military officials, describing the West Bank by its biblical name.
Israeli military vehicles deploy during a house demolition operation in the Palestinian village of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, on Sept. 3, 2024. (AFP)
Videos of the raids shared on social media show deserted streets and colossal damage to buildings. The UN Human Rights Office has accused Israeli forces of using “unlawful force” and called for an “immediate end” to the operation.
Kamal Abu Al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, said the situation was the “most severe, the most painful and oppressive” in years. He said Israeli troops had mounted 12 major raids in the city since Oct. 7.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the aid agencies operating in the West Bank, said that “repeated attacks by the Israeli military on health workers, ambulances and medical facilities, are severely hindering people’s ability to get access to medical care. There has been very limited medical access in the city of Tulkarm and its refugee camps.”
INNUMBERS
• 650 Palestinians killed in West Bank and East Jerusalem since Oct. 7 (Palestinian Ministry of Health).
• 1,300 Attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Oct. 7, 2023-Sept. 2, 2024 period
Source: UN OCHA
The organization said its teams had ceased operations in Jenin and Tulkarm, citing restrictions to their movements.
Ori Goldberg, a lecturer at Israel’s Reichman University, regards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions in the West Bank as an act of desperation designed to rally public support amid mass protests over his handling of the Gaza hostage crisis.
The strategy could be backfiring, however, as the Israeli occupation of the West Bank appears to be “teetering” on the brink of all-out chaos.
“Israeli citizens support the war on terror,” Goldberg told Arab News, referring to the West Bank raids, but “they don’t see the connection between the dead hostages and the Israeli rampage. They think we have to do this. But I don’t think Israel can contain the violence.”
The military operation inside the Jenin refugee camp has left many Palestinian homes damaged or destroyed by army bulldozers and pavement stripped from roads.
On Friday, agencies said residents used bulldozers of their own to begin clearing the rubble after Israeli armored vehicles left.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its forces regularly make incursions into Palestinian communities, but the latest raids as well as the hawkish comments by Gallant signaled an escalation, residents told AFP news agency.
The Israeli military has maintained a strong footing in the occupied territory for decades to protect the roughly 500,000 Israeli citizens living in settlements there.
Despite international condemnation, the Netanyahu government has allowed illegal settlements to continue to expand across the West Bank.
In March this year, the Israeli government announced it was confiscating an area of roughly 1,980 acres in the northern Jordan Valley with a view to expanding Jewish settlements there.
On Friday, a 26-year-old Turkish American woman was killed in the West Bank during a protest where Israeli forces opened fire. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in Beita, a town near Nablus.
Settler violence in the area also is nothing new. However, there has been a sharp increase in the number of attacks on Palestinians since the war in Gaza began.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were at least 1,300 attacks between Oct. 7 and Sept. 2 this year.
The raids and settler violence have been taking place against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, which has left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and created a major humanitarian crisis.
Despite international pressure, Netanyahu has resisted calls to strike a ceasefire deal with Hamas, which would see the return of the remaining hostages, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and an end to the fighting.
Opinion
This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)
Last week, Netanyahu presented a plan that included the destruction of the Netzarim Corridor — an 8-km stretch of land that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the former Karni crossing in northeastern Gaza.
He said reconstruction would not be permitted and that Palestinians would not be allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza to prevent Hamas from establishing “nests” in the area.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphi Corridor, which separates Gaza from Egypt, would remain under Israeli control, and a third corridor would be built between Khan Younis and Rafah, which would also be under Israeli military control.
What was perhaps more striking about the map used by Netanyahu during his news conference, however, was that the West Bank appeared to be completely annexed by Israel.
Asked by a reporter to elaborate on this, Netanyahu said: “I didn’t get into that. I was talking about Gaza. There is a whole issue of how to achieve peace between us. That’s another press conference.”
Whether Netanyahu’s government intends to open a new front in its war with the Palestinians and seize complete control of the West Bank remains unclear.
Reichman University’s Goldberg is skeptical about Netanyahu’s appetite for risk given the magnitude of unfinished business both in Gaza and the Lebanon border. “I doubt that Israel will bring larger forces into the West Bank,” he said. “It cannot afford to lose on yet another front.”
Egyptian archaeologist calls on Berlin to return Nefertiti bust
Akhenaten, called the heretic king, was notorious for promoting the worship of the god Aten to the exclusion of Egypt’s other gods
Updated 23 min 45 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO: Prominent Egyptian archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass has launched a petition for the return to Egypt of the pharaonic bust of Queen Nefertiti from the Neues Museum in Berlin.
Nefertiti’s famous painted limestone bust was uncovered at Tell el-Amarna, around 300 km (185 miles) south of Cairo, in 1912 by a German archaeological mission, which shipped it to Berlin the following year.
Amarna was the short-lived capital of Nefertiti’s husband, the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten, who reigned until about 1335 B.C.
Akhenaten, called the heretic king, was notorious for promoting the worship of the god Aten to the exclusion of Egypt’s other gods. His reign also introduced a radical change in Egyptian art.
In his petition launched on Saturday, Hawass asked for the return of the bust, saying it was removed from Egypt illegally after its discovery.
“We announce today that Egypt — this is the national committee, it is not a government committee — asks for the return of the bust of Nefertiti,” Hawass said.
“What I need from everyone here is to go to my website... hawasszahi.com, and you will sign, one signature, to show that you would love for this bust to come back.”
Hawass said he is not calling for the repatriation of artefacts taken out of Egypt legally. His campaign is focused on repatriating “three main beautiful objects” including the bust of Nefertiti, the Rosetta Stone and the Dendera Zodiac.
Officials at Berlin’s Neues Museum were not immediately available for comment.
Turkish president vows to ‘purge’ military graduates who took a pro-secular oath
Erdogan added that an investigation was underway and vowed that ”the few impertinent individuals responsible will be purged”
Updated 37 min 46 sec ago
AP
ISTANBUL: The Turkish president has hit out at military graduates who took a pro-secular oath during their graduation ceremony, promising that those behind it would be “purged” from the military.
Speaking at a conference for Islamic schools in the northwestern city of Kocaeli on Saturday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described those involved as “opportunists.” He added that an investigation was underway and vowed that ”the few impertinent individuals responsible will be purged.”
“Whoever they are, it is not possible for them to be part of our military,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan was present at the graduation ceremony at the Turkish Military Academy in Ankara on Aug. 30.
Valedictorian Ebru Eroglu led the 960-strong graduating class in reciting the official military oath about defending Turkiye. But video footage from about an hour later shows about 400 of the graduates gathered in a field, raising their swords and chanting “We are the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal” — a reference to the secular founder of modern Turkiye, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Eroglu then led the group in the Officer’s Oath, in which they vowed to defend “a secular, democratic Turkiye.” That oath was discontinued from the academy in 2022.
Turkiye has become more overtly religious under Erdogan, shedding some of the secularist traditions of the original Kemalist republic.
Turkiye’s military has traditionally viewed itself as the guarantor of secularism, which has resulted in a series of coups. It led three takeovers between 1960 and 1980 and toppled a conservative government in 1997. However in 2016, an attempt to overthrow Erdogan and his religious-conservative administration was foiled and thousands of people were purged from the armed forces, the judiciary, and other public institutions.
Some pro-government commentators were highly critical of the actions of the military graduates, suggesting it might be a challenge to Erdogan’s government. Others online praised it as a sign that the Turkish military will remain secular regardless of the ruling party. Erdogan ally Devlet Bahceli, head of the Nationalist Movement Party, later called for an investigation. On Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense confirmed that a probe had been launched.
In addition to the controversy, this year’s graduation also stood out for being the first time in Turkiye’s history that all three branches of the military — army, navy and air force — saw women graduating at the top of their respective classes.
