Gaza official says 300 killed in Khan Yunis as Israeli army ends assault
Gaza official says 300 killed in Khan Yunis as Israeli army ends assault/node/2559601/middle-east
Gaza official says 300 killed in Khan Yunis as Israeli army ends assault
Displaced Palestinians leave western Khan Yunis to areas in the eastern parts of the city following reports of Israeli forces withdrawing from the area in the southern Gaza Strip on July 30, 2024. (AFP)
Gaza official says 300 killed in Khan Yunis as Israeli army ends assault
The Israeli military launched the assault on July 22 to halt rocket fire from the area
Last week, it said Israeli troops had retrieved the bodies of five Israelis from the area
Updated 30 July 2024
AFP
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Tuesday that an Israeli operation in and around the territory’s second city of Khan Yunis killed about 300 people since it began last week, while the army said it had “eliminated 150 terrorists.”
“Since the beginning of the Israeli ground invasion of the eastern part of Khan Yunis province, the civil defense and medical teams have recovered approximately 300 bodies of martyrs, many of them decomposed,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The Israeli military launched the assault on July 22 to halt rocket fire from the area, which already saw heavy fighting earlier this year.
Last week, it said troops had retrieved the bodies of five Israelis from the area.
They had been killed during the Hamas attacks of October 7 and their bodies taken back to Gaza, the military said.
On Tuesday, the military said it had completed the operation in the area of Khan Yunis and had killed “over 150 terrorists.”
It said troops also “dismantled terror tunnels, weapons storage facilities, and terrorist infrastructure and located weapons.”
Israelis protest in the streets again as the toll in Gaza grows
Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a ceasefire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor
Updated 10 sec ago
AP
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israelis again poured into the streets for another large protest over the government’s failure to secure the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, while hospital and local authorities said Israeli air raids in the territory killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday.
Health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak. The drive, launched after the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children during a war that has destroyed Gaza’s health care system and much of its infrastructure. The third phase of vaccinations will be in the north.
Israel kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it received the bodies of nine people killed in two air raids. One hit a residential building, killing four people and wounding at least 10, while five people were killed in a strike on a house in western Nuseirat.
Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital, said a woman and her two children were killed in a strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij.
In northern Gaza, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government. Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas command post embedded in a former school compound.
The war began when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people, primarily civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding more than 100 hostages. Israeli authorities estimate about a third are dead.
Anger again led large crowds of Israelis into the streets Saturday night, a week after one of the largest demonstrations of the war following the discovery of another six dead hostages in Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry says more than 94,000 people have been wounded.
Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank. A dayslong military operation in Jenin left dozens of dead. “They (Israeli forces) besieged the area and brought in bulldozers. As you see, they destroyed the whole area,” said a resident, Mahmoud Al Razi.
A day after an American protester was shot and killed in the West Bank, her family urged President Joe Biden to order an independent investigation, saying that “given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate.” Their statement called the 26-year-old recent university graduate a “ray of sunshine” and an advocate for human dignity.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who also holds Turkish nationality, was shot in the head, two Palestinian doctors said. She had been demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Witnesses said she was shot during a moment of calm following earlier clashes.
The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity.”
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have left more than 690 Palestinians dead since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, according to Palestinian health officials.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a ceasefire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.
Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out negotiations by issuing new demands. Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by Biden in July.
Along the border with Lebanon, near-daily clashes continued between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
An Israeli drone strike hit a Lebanese Civil Defense team fighting a fire in the town of Froun, killing three volunteers and wounding two others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. The blaze was sparked by a previous Israeli strike, the statement said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israel’s military said some 45 rockets were fired at northern Israel in several barrages, many targeting the Mount Meron area but falling in open areas. Several rockets fell in Shlomi and around the city of Safed. There were no injuries. The military later said its jets struck Hezbollah military infrastructure and a rocket launcher in the area of Qabrikha in southern Lebanon.
Iraq’s Kurdish authorities extradite activist to Iran: group
Khosrawi “asked to return to the Islamic Republic of Iran” and signed a document stating this, the Asayesh added in a statement
Updated 38 min 19 sec ago
AFP
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq: An Iranian Kurdish activist was extradited from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region back to Iran, the opposition group he belongs to said on Saturday, an account disputed by local authorities.
Behzad Khosrawi was arrested last week by security forces in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah and handed over to “Iranian intelligence,” said the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), one of several Iranian Kurdish groups exiled for decades in northern Iraq.
“He is a member of an opposition political party... and enjoys the right to asylum as a political refugee,” said the group, condemning his extradition.
Local security forces, called Asayesh, said Khosrawi was arrested “because he did not have residency” in the Kurdish region, denying he had any connection to “political activism.”
Khosrawi “asked to return to the Islamic Republic of Iran” and signed a document stating this, the Asayesh added in a statement.
The KDPI said Khosrawi, a member of their party, “had been living with his mother and sister in Sulaimaniyah for more than 10 years... and their residency was in order.”
He had been given refugee status by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the KDPI said.
Iran considers the KDPI a “terrorist” organization.
Iranian Kurdish groups, whose members are made up of Iran’s long-marginalized Kurdish minority, have trained to use weapons from their outposts in northern Iraq for decades.
After several Iranian strikes on the groups, Iraqi authorities in late 2023 pledged to disarm these factions and move them from bases near the Iranian border to camps.
Tehran has accused the Kurdish opposition groups of inciting mass protest in Iran in 2022, after the death of Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police.
No spying took place by employees of Iraqi prime minister’s office, adviser says
The reports have caused a stir in Iraq, which has seen a period of relative stability since Sudani was brought to power in late 2022 as part of an agreement between ruling factions ending a year-long political stalemate
Updated 53 min 58 sec ago
Reuters
BAGHDAD: A political adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani has rejected recent allegations that employees at the premier’s office have been spying on and wire-tapping senior officials and politicians.
Since late August, Iraqi local media outlets and lawmakers have alleged that employees at Sudani’s office had been arrested on charges of spying on senior officials.
“This is an inflated lie,” said Fadi Al-Shammari in an interview with an Iraqi broadcaster published late on Friday, the most explicit denial by a senior member of the prime minister’s team.
He said the allegations were aimed at undermining Sudani ahead of parliamentary polls expected to be held next year.
“Everything that has happened in the last two weeks consists of media exaggeration contrary to reality and the truth.”
The reports have caused a stir in Iraq, which has seen a period of relative stability since Sudani was brought to power in late 2022 as part of an agreement between ruling factions ending a year-long political stalemate.
While there had been one arrest at the prime minister’s office in August, it had nothing to do with spying or wire-tapping, Shammari said. The employee in question was detained after contacting lawmakers and other politicians while posing as a different person, he said.
“(He) talked to lawmakers using different numbers and fake names and asked them for a number of different files,” he added, without providing details.
“There was no spying, no wiretapping.”
Algeria’s 78-year-old president is expected to breeze to a second term in Saturday’s election
More than 24 million Algerians are registered to vote, and both of Tebboune’s challengers have urged a large turnout
Updated 7 min 31 sec ago
AP
ALGIERS, Algeria: Polls closed in Algeria on Saturday, where voters were deciding whether to grant army-backed President Abdelmadjid Tebboune another term — five years after pro-democracy protests prompted the military to oust the previous president after two decades in power.
Since Algeria announced the election date earlier this year, there has been little suspense about the result.
Though he is expected to be named the winner once the results are finalized, military-backed President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said on Saturday after voting that he hoped “whoever wins will continue on the path toward a point of no return in the construction of democracy.”
With vote counting underway Saturday evening, the question is less about who will win and more about how many voters stayed home.
Tebboune’s backers and challengers all urged voters to come out to cast their ballots after boycotts and high abstention rates in previous elections marred the government’s ability to claim popular support.
But throughout the day, many polling places in Algiers sat mostly empty, apart from scores of police officers manning their posts. Voters weren’t queuing outside in the summer heat waiting to cast their ballots.
However, polling places were kept open until 9 p.m. on Saturday after officials extended the voting period to accommodate concerns that people may not have voted during the day in certain parts of the country due to the heat. As of 5 p.m., voter turnout was 26.5 percent in Algeria and 18.3 percent for precincts abroad.
Preliminary results are expected late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.
Algeria is Africa’s largest country by area and, with almost 45 million people, it’s the continent’s second most populous after South Africa to hold presidential elections in 2024 — a year in which more than 50 elections are being held worldwide, encompassing more than half the world’s population.
The campaign — rescheduled earlier this year to take place during North Africa’s hot summer — was characterized by apathy from the population, which continues to be plagued by high costs of living and drought that brought water shortages to some parts of the country.
“Uncle Tebboune,” as his campaign framed the 78-year-old, was elected in December 2019 after nearly a year of weekly “Hirak” demonstrations demanding the resignation of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Their demands were met when Bouteflika resigned and was replaced by an interim government of his former allies, which called for elections later in the year.
Protesters opposed holding elections too soon, fearing candidates running that year each were close to the old regime and would derail dreams of a civilian-led, non-military state. Tebboune, a former prime minister seen as close to the military, won. But his victory was stained by boycotts and Election Day tumult, during which crowds sacked voting stations and police broke up demonstrations.
Throughout his tenure, Tebboune has used oil and gas revenue to boost some social benefits — including unemployment insurance as well as public wages and pensions — to calm discontent. To cement his legitimacy, Tebboune hopes more of the country’s 24 million eligible voters participate in Saturday’s election than in his first, when only 39.9 percent voted.
Many of the last election’s boycotters remain unconvinced about elections ushering in change.
Activists and international organizations, including Amnesty International, have railed against how authorities continue prosecuting those involved in opposition parties, media organizations and civil society groups.
Some have denounced this election as a rubber stamp exercise that can only entrench the status quo.
“Algerians don’t give a damn about this bogus election,” said former Hirak leader Hakim Addad, who was banned from participating in politics three years ago. “The political crisis will persist as long as the regime remains in place. The Hirak has spoken.”
Twenty-six candidates submitted preliminary paperwork to run in the election, although only two were ultimately approved to challenge Tebboune.
Neither political novices, they avoided directly criticizing Tebboune on the campaign trail and, like the incumbent, emphasized participation.
Abdelali Hassani Cherif, a 57-year-old head of the Islamist party Movement of Society for Peace (MSP) made populist appeals to Algerian youth, running on the slogan “Opportunity!” Youcef Aouchiche, a 41-year-old former journalist running with the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), campaigned on a “vision for tomorrow.”
Both challengers and their parties risked losing backing from would-be supporters who thought they were selling out by contributing to the idea that the election was democratic and contested.
Walking near a vote center in downtown Algiers, longtime FFS supporter Mhand Kasdi said his party had betrayed its ideals by putting forth a candidate for the first time since 1999.
“It is giving its backing to a rigged election,” the 55-year-old gas station manager said, adding that Aouchiche and Hassani “are going to help make the regime’s candidate look good.”
Voting in his hometown Saturday, Aouchiche called on Algerians to vote for him “to give young people the confidence to put an end to the despair that drives them to take the boats of death in an attempt to reach the other side of the Mediterranean,” referencing many who elect to migrate to Europe in search of opportunity rather than remain at home.
Andrew Farrand, the Middle East and North Africa director at the geopolitical risk consultancy Horizon Engage, said both challengers were more aimed at the 2025 legislative elections than the 2024 presidential contest. Because Algerian law funds political parties based on the number of seats they win in legislative elections, they hope campaigning positions them for a strong 2025 performance.
“It’s a long game: How can I mobilize my base? How can I build up a campaign machine? And how can I get into the good graces of the authorities so that I can be in a position to increase my seats?” he said. “We’ve seen that in their choice not to overtly criticize president … paired with a very strong message to Algerians to come out and vote.”
Israeli raids strike border villages amid fears of fresh escalation
Army chief of staff threatens further ‘offensive measures’ inside Lebanon
Updated 07 September 2024
NAJIA HOUSSARI
BEIRUT: Escalating hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces in recent days have raised fears of a wider conflict, with a senior Israeli army official warning that his forces are preparing to take “offensive steps” inside Lebanon.
Israeli media reported on Saturday that several rockets fell in the Meron area in the north of the country.
Hezbollah also targeted a strategic military base near Safed, according to reports.
Lebanon’s caretaker Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib. (AFP)
Signs of military escalation emerged on Friday as the Israeli army used concussion missiles in intensive raids centered on an area south of the Litani River.
Israel is demanding Hezbollah halt its military action in the area, particularly the launching of rockets, so that settlers in the north can return to their homes.
FASTFACT
Hezbollah has exchanged near daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Lebanon’s caretaker Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib said that Israel had conveyed a message throuh intermediaries “that it is not interested in a ceasefire in Lebanon, even after reaching a ceasefire in Gaza.”
On Saturday, Israeli army Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi said that his forces are preparing to take “offensive steps inside Lebanon.”
During an inspection tour in the Golan Heights, Halevi said the Israeli army is focused on confronting Hezbollah, and that a significant number of militants had been killed in attacks during the past month.
The Israeli army was “working to reduce threats to residents of the northern region and the Golan Heights, while also preparing for an offensive at a later stage,” he said.
Israeli media confirmed that several rockets fell in the Meron area after sirens sounded in the city of Safed.
The Israeli army said that it “detected the launch of 30 shells from Lebanese territory toward the north.”
Israeli mortar shells and incendiary flares struck the Labouneh area in the western sector, causing fires on the Khiam plain for the second consecutive day.
Israeli media reported that a building in Shlomi was hit, and a fire broke out in Liman in Western Galilee after eight rockets were fired in a single salvo from southern Lebanon.
On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes were directed at areas around the towns of Qabrikha and Bani Hayyan, and the Kunin forests.
Israeli surveillance aircraft maintained a continuous presence over the western and central sectors of the south.
Hezbollah said in a statement that it retaliated against Israeli attacks on Friday by targeting a command post occupied by forces from the Golani Brigade with volleys of Katyusha rockets.
The group also targeted other Israeli military sites, including Hadab Yaron and Al-Raheb, with artillery fire.
Hezbollah said it targeted a deployment of Israeli soldiers around the settlement of Manot with rockets in response to attacks on the town of Kunin.
The Israeli air force said that raids on southern border villages on Friday night targeted rocket launch sites in towns including Beit Lif, Aitaroun, Dahra and Kfar Kila.
Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said that more than 15 missile platforms had been hit, in addition to several platforms that were ready for immediate launch.
Adraee said that “after targeting the platforms, several of which were prepared for immediate launch toward Israeli territory, multiple shells were seen being fired from the platforms and landing within Lebanese territory.”