Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months

Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months
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A Palestinian shows his damaged shoes in Khan Yunis, on the southern Gaza Strip on July 6, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant Hamas group. Finding shoes and clothing has become increasingly difficult for the 2.4 million people living in the Palestinian territory besieged by Israel. (AFP)
Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months
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Palestinians wait for a cobbler to repair their shoes in the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on July 5, 2024. (AFP)
Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months
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A Palestinian walks in damaged shoes in Khan Yunis, on the southern Gaza Strip on July 6, 2024. (AFP)
Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months
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Amal al-Robayaa, washes clothes amid the ruins of the family home destroyed in an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on November 7, 2023. (AFP)
Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months
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Palestinian women wash their clothes using sea water due to the lack of fresh water and electricity, along the beach in Deir el-Balah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 29, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 18 August 2024
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Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months

Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months

GAZA: For months, Safaa Yassin has dressed her child in the same white bodysuit, an all-too-familiar tale in the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by 10 months of war.
“When I was pregnant, I dreamed of dressing my daughter in beautiful clothes. Today, I have nothing to put on her,” says Yassin, one of thousands of Palestinians displaced from Gaza City.
“I never thought that one day I wouldn’t be able to dress my children,” says the 38-year-old, now living in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area designated as a humanitarian zone by Israeli forces.
“But the few clothes I found before evacuating to the south were either the wrong size or not suitable for the season,” she adds, as Gaza bakes in summertime temperatures of 30-plus degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) every day.
Finding clothing — any clothing — has become increasingly difficult for the 2.4 million people living in the territory besieged by Israel.
Gaza once had a thriving textiles industry but since the war began on October 7 with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, it has received just a trickle of goods.
Faten Juda also struggles to dress her 15-month-old son, Adam, who is squeezed into ill-fitting pyjamas, his bare arms and legs sticking out from the tight fabric.
“He’s growing every day and his clothes don’t fit him anymore, but I can’t find any others,” the 30-year-old tells AFP.
Children are not the only ones suffering from the lack of clothing in the Gaza Strip, which counted 900 textile factories in the industry’s heyday in the early 1990s.
The sector employed 35,000 people and sent four million items to Israel every month. But those numbers have plummeted since 2007, when Hamas took power and Israel blockaded Gaza.
In recent years, Gaza’s workshops had dwindled to about 100, employing about 4,000 people and shipping about 30,000-40,000 items a month to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
By January, three months into the war, the World Bank estimated that 79 percent of Gaza’s private sector establishments had been partially or totally destroyed.
Even the factories that are still standing have ground to a halt, after months without electricity in Gaza. Any fuel that arrives for generators is mainly used for hospitals and United Nations facilities such as warehouses and aid-supply points.
In these conditions, finding new clothes is a rare event.
“Some women have been wearing the same headscarf for the past 10 months,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees, posted on X.
Wearing the same clothes all the time is not just unpleasant, it is a health hazard. With limited water to wash them, disease-spreading lice abound.
Ahmed Al-Masri, 29, left his home in the north of Gaza at the start of the war.
Today in Khan Yunis, in the south, he says he does not have any spare shoes or clothes.
“My shoes are extremely damaged. I’ve had them repaired at least 30 times, each time paying 10 times more than before the war,” he says, his gaunt face burnt by the sun.

POVERTY AND DISPLACEMENT
With two-thirds of Gaza’s population living in poverty even before the war, many people were forced to sell their clothes once the conflict broke out and tanked the economy further.
But “there are no more shoes or clothes to sell,” says Omar Abu Hashem, 25, who was displaced from Rafah, on the Egyptian border, to Khan Yunis further north.
Abu Hashem left his home in such a rush that he was unable to take anything with him. He has been wearing the same pair of shoes for five months, but only every other day.
“I share my pair of shoes with my brother-in-law,” he explains.
On the days when he goes barefoot, he fears the worst, tiptoeing around the waste and rubble that carry diseases and contamination of all kinds.
Ahmed Al-Masri, meanwhile, just wants some soap to wash his only T-shirt and pair of trousers.
“I have been wearing the same clothes for nine months. I have nothing else. I quickly wash my T-shirt and then I wait for it to dry,” he says.
“And all this, without soap or detergent.”


King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation

King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation
Updated 7 sec ago
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King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation

King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation
  • Donation will fund healthcare, protect children, provide emergency cash 

LONDON: King Charles III has helped pay for urgent humanitarian aid needed in Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad.

Charles made an undisclosed donation to International Rescue Committee UK to fund healthcare, protect children and provide emergency cash.

The king is the patron of the charity, which says Syria is facing profound humanitarian needs despite the defeat of the Assad regime by opposition forces.

Khusbu Patel, IRC UK’s acting executive director, said: “His Majesty’s contribution underscores his deep commitment to addressing urgent global challenges, and helping people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover and rebuild their lives.

“We are immensely grateful to His Majesty The King for his donation supporting our work in Syria. This assistance will enable us to provide essential services, including healthcare, child protection and emergency cash, to those people most in need.”

The charity said it was scaling-up its efforts in northern Syria to evaluate the urgent needs of communities. Towns and villages have become accessible to aid groups for the first time in years now that rebel forces have taken control of much of the country.

The charity said Syria ranks fourth on its emergency watchlist for 2025 and a recent assessment found that people in the northeast of the country were facing unsafe childbirth conditions, cold-related illnesses, water contamination, and shortages of medical supplies.

Charles last month said he would be “praying for Syria” as he attended a church service in London attended by various faiths.

The king met Syrian nun Sister Annie Demerjian at the event, who described the situation in her homeland after the regime had been swept from power.


Israeli strike targets facilities in Aleppo: Syrian state tv 

Israeli strike targets facilities in Aleppo: Syrian state tv 
Updated 6 min 33 sec ago
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Israeli strike targets facilities in Aleppo: Syrian state tv 

Israeli strike targets facilities in Aleppo: Syrian state tv 

CAIRO: An Israeli strike targeted military facilities at Safira town in Syria’s Aleppo, Syrian state television reported early on Friday. 

(Developing story)


After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader

After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader
Updated 24 min 12 sec ago
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After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader

After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader

ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party met Thursday with the parliamentary speaker and far-right MHP leader amid tentative efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the banned PKK militant group. DEM’s three-person delegation met with Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and then with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli.

The aim was to brief them on a rare weekend meeting with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party who is serving life without parole on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.

It was the Ocalan’s first political visit in almost a decade and follows an easing of tension between Ankara and the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil and is proscribed by Washington and Brussels as a terror group.

The visit took place two months after Bahceli extended a surprise olive branch to Ocalan, inviting him to parliament to disband the PKK and saying he should be given the “right to hope” in remarks understood to moot a possible early release.

Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tentative opening came a month before Syrian rebels began a lightning 12-day offensive that ousted Bashar Assad in a move which has forced Turkiye’s concerns about the Kurdish issue into the headlines.

During Saturday’s meeting with DEM lawmakers Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, Ocalan said he had “the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr.Bahceli and Mr.Erdogan.”

Onder and Buldan then “began a round of meetings with the parliamentary parties” and were joined on Thursday by Ahmet Turk, 82, a veteran Kurdish politician with a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.


Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links

Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links
Updated 29 min 5 sec ago
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Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links

Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links

SULAIMANIYAH: Authorities in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah have banned four organizations accused of affiliation with the Turkish-blacklisted Kurdistan Workers Party, activists said Thursday, denouncing the move as “political.”

The four organizations include two feminist groups and a media production house, according to the METRO center for press freedoms which organized a news conference in Sulaimaniyah to criticize the decision.

PKK fighters have several positions in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases used to strike Kurdish insurgents.

Ankara and Washington both deem the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye, a terrorist organization.

Authorities in Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s second city, have been accused of leniency toward PKK activities.

But the Iraqi federal authorities in Baghdad have recently sharpened their tone against the Turkish Kurdish insurgents.

Col. Salam Abdel Khaleq, the spokesman for the Kurdish Asayesh security forces in Sulaimaniyah, told AFP that the bans came “after a decision from the Iraqi judiciary and as a result of the expiration of the licenses” of these groups.


Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September

Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September
Updated 34 min 47 sec ago
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Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September

Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said on Thursday its special forces raided an underground missile production site in Syria in September that it said was primed to produce hundreds of precision missiles for use against Israel by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

The complex near Masyaf, in Hama province close to the Mediterranean coast, was “the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region,” Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told a briefing with reporters.

“This facility was designed to manufacture hundreds of strategic missiles per year from start to finish, for Hezbollah to use in their aerial attacks on Israel,” he said.

He said the plant, dug into the side of a mountain, had been under observation by Israeli intelligence since construction work began in 2017 and was on the point of being able to manufacture precision-guided long-range missiles, some of them with a range of up to 300 km (190 miles).

“This ability was becoming active, so we’re talking about an immediate threat,” he said.

Details of the Sept. 8 raid have been reported in the Israeli media in recent days but Shoshani said this was the first confirmation by the military, which usually does not comment on special forces operations of this type.

At the time, Syrian state media said at least 16 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the west of the country.

Shoshani said the hours-long nighttime raid was “one of the more complex operations the IDF has done in recent years.” Accompanied by airstrikes, it involved dozens of aircraft and around 100 helicopter-borne troops, who located weapons and seized documents, he said.

“At the end of the raid, the troops dismantled the facility, including the machines and the manufacturing equipment themselves,” he said, adding that dismantling the plant was “key to ensure the safety of Israel.”

Israeli officials have accused the former Syrian government of President Bahar Assad of helping the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement receive arms from Iran and say they are determined to stop the flow of weapons into Lebanon.

As Bashar Assad’s government crumbled toward the end of last year, Israel launched a series of strikes against Syrian military infrastructure and weapons manufacturing sites to ensure they did not fall into the hands of its enemies.