Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages

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The Hamas government’s health ministry warned Friday all hospitals in Gaza would have to stop or reduce services “within 48 hours” for lack of fuel, blaming Israel for blocking its entry. (AFP/File)

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Updated 22 November 2024

AFP

November 22, 2024 16:24

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Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages

“We raise an urgent warning as all hospitals in Gaza Strip will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours,” Marwan Al-Hams, director of Gaza’s field hospitals, said
“We call on international institutions to exploit the decision of the International Criminal Court to stop the genocidal war in Gaza Strip“

Updated 22 November 2024

AFP

November 22, 2024 16:24

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GAZA: The Hamas government’s health ministry warned on Friday all hospitals in Gaza would have to stop or reduce services “within 48 hours” for lack of fuel, blaming Israel for blocking its entry.
“We raise an urgent warning as all hospitals in Gaza Strip will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours due to the occupation’s (Israel’s) obstruction of fuel entry,” Marwan Al-Hams, director of Gaza’s field hospitals, said during a press conference.
“We call on international institutions to exploit the decision of the International Criminal Court to stop the genocidal war in Gaza Strip,” he added.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday “for crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed between October 8, 2023, and May 20 this year.
The court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says it killed in a July air strike, but whose death Hamas has not confirmed.
Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian crisis since the outbreak of war in the Palestinian territory following Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
In late October, the health ministry reported that all hospitals but one in northern Gaza were out of service.
The only medical facility still only partly functioning in the area affected by the Israeli assault had “no medicine or medical supplies,” Kamal Adwan hospital director Hossam Abu Safia said at the time.
The ministry’s latest warning comes three days after the World Health Organization (WHO) expressed grave concern for hospitals still partly operating in northern Gaza.
WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said on Tuesday that the organization was “particularly concerned about Kamal Adwan Hospital” in Beit Lahia, where Israeli forces launched an offensive against Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups last month.

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What to know about sudden rebel gains in Syria's 13-year war and why it matters

Updated 21 sec ago

AP

November 30, 2024 01:54

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What to know about sudden rebel gains in Syria's 13-year war and why it matters

It was the first opposition attack on Aleppo since 2016, when an air campaign by Russian warplanes helped Syrian President Bashar Assad retake the northwestern city
The roughly 30 percent of the country not under Assad is controlled by a range of opposition forces and foreign troops, including Turkish and US forces and their allies

Updated 21 sec ago

AP

November 30, 2024 01:54

WASHINGTON: The 13-year civil war in Syria has roared back into prominence with a surprise rebel offensive on Aleppo, one of Syria’s largest cities and an ancient business hub. The push is among the rebels’ strongest in years in a war whose destabilizing effects have rippled far beyond the country’s borders.
It was the first opposition attack on Aleppo since 2016, when a brutal air campaign by Russian warplanes helped Syrian President Bashar Assad retake the northwestern city. Intervention by Russia, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and other groups has allowed Assad to remain in power, within the 70 percent of Syria under his control.
The surge in fighting has raised the prospect of another violent front reopening in the Middle East, at a time when US-backed Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Robert Ford, the last-serving US ambassador to Syria, pointed to months of Israeli strikes on Syrian and Hezbollah targets in the area, and to Israel’s ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon this week, as factors providing Syria’s rebels with the opportunity to advance.
Here’s a look at some of the key aspects of the new fighting:
Why does the fighting at Aleppo matter?
Assad has been at war with opposition forces seeking his overthrow for 13 years, a conflict that’s killed an estimated half-million people. Some 6.8 million Syrians have fled the country, a refugee flow that helped change the political map in Europe by fueling anti-immigrant far-right movements.
The roughly 30 percent of the country not under Assad is controlled by a range of opposition forces and foreign troops. The US has about 900 troops in northeast Syria, far from Aleppo, to guard against a resurgence by the Daesh group. Both the US and Israel conduct occasional strikes in

Syria against government forces and Iran-allied militias. Turkiye has forces in Syria as well, and has influence with the broad alliance of opposition forces storming Aleppo.
Coming after years with few sizeable changes in territory between Syria’s warring parties, the fighting “has the potential to be really quite, quite consequential and potentially game-changing,” if Syrian government forces prove unable to hold their ground, said Charles Lister, a longtime Syria analyst with the US-based Middle East Institute. Risks include if Daesh fighters see it as an opening, Lister said.
Ford said the fighting in Aleppo would become more broadly destabilizing if it drew Russia and Turkiye — each with its own interests to protect in Syria — into direct heavy fighting against each other.

The US and UN have long designated the opposition force leading the attack at Aleppo — Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, known by its initials HTS — as a terrorist organization.
Its leader, Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, emerged as the leader of Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch in 2011, in the first months of Syria’s war. His fight was an unwelcome intervention to many in Syria’s opposition, who hoped to keep the fight against Assad’s brutal rule untainted by violent extremism.
Golani early on claimed responsibility for deadly bombings, pledged to attack Western forces and sent religious police to enforce modest dress by women.
Golani has sought to remake himself in recent years. He renounced his Al-Qaeda ties in 2016. He’s disbanded his religious police force, cracked down on extremist groups in his territory, and portrayed himself as a protector of other religions. That includes last year allowing the first Christian Mass in the city of Idlib in years.
What’s the history of Aleppo in the war?
At the crossroads of trade routes and empires for thousands of years, Aleppo is one of the centers of commerce and culture in the Middle East.
Aleppo was home to 2.3 million people before the war. Rebels seized the east side of the city in 2012, and it became the proudest symbol of the advance of armed opposition factions.
In 2016, government forces backed by Russian airstrikes laid siege to the city. Russian shells, missiles and crude barrel bombs — fuel canisters or other containers loaded with explosives and metal — methodically leveled neighborhoods. Starving and under siege, rebels surrendered Aleppo that year.
The Russian military’s entry was the turning point in the war, allowing Assad to stay on in the territory he held.
This year, Israeli airstrikes in Aleppo have hit Hezbollah weapons depots and Syrian forces, among other targets, according to an independent monitoring group. Israel rarely acknowledges strikes at Aleppo and other government-held areas of Syria.

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Topics: Syria Aleppo Bashar Assad

Syrian authorities closed Aleppo airport and canceled all flights, military source says

Updated 22 min 40 sec ago

Reuters

November 30, 2024 01:48

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Syrian authorities closed Aleppo airport and canceled all flights, military source says

Updated 22 min 40 sec ago

Reuters

November 30, 2024 01:48

AMMAN: Syrian authorities closed Aleppo airport and canceled all flights, a military source told Reuters early on Saturday as Syrian rebels opposed to President Bashar Assad said on Friday they had reached the heart of the northern city of Aleppo.

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Topics: Syria Aleppo

2 migrants dead, one missing off Tunisia: reports

Updated 30 November 2024

AFP

November 29, 2024 00:14

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2 migrants dead, one missing off Tunisia: reports

Tunisia and neighboring Libya have become key departure points for migrants
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the crossing

Updated 30 November 2024

AFP

November 29, 2024 00:14

TUNIS: Two unidentified bodies were recovered off Tunisia’s eastern coast after a migrant boat capsized, local media reported on Friday, with one person still missing and 28 rescued.
Most of the passengers were Tunisian, according to the reports, which said that the boat had set sail from Teboulba, a coastal town some 180 kilometers south of the capital Tunis.
Tunisia and neighboring Libya have become key departure points for migrants, often from other African countries, who risk perilous Mediterranean Sea journeys in the hopes of reaching better lives in Europe.
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the crossing. Italy, whose Lampedusa Island is only 150 kilometers (90 miles) from Tunisia, is often their first port of call.
In late October, the bodies of 15 people believed to be migrants were recovered by authorities in Monastir, eastern Tunisia.
And in late September, 36 would-be migrants — mainly Tunisians — were rescued off Bizerte in northern Tunisia.
Since January 1, at least 103 makeshift boats have capsized and 341 bodies have been recovered off Tunisia’s coast, according to the interior ministry.
More than 1,300 people died or disappeared last year in shipwrecks off the North African country, according to the Tunisian FTDES rights group.
The International Organization for Migration has said that more than 30,309 migrants have died in the Mediterranean in the past decade, including more than 3,000 last year.

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Topics: Tunis migrants Europe

Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers

An Iraqi policeman checks the ID of a driver at a checkpoint in Mosul on February 22, 2018. (AFP)

Updated 30 November 2024

AFP

November 29, 2024 23:28

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Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers

The Labor Ministry says the influx is mainly from Syria, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers

Updated 30 November 2024

AFP

November 29, 2024 23:28

KARBALA: Rami, a Syrian worker in Iraq, spends his 16-hour shifts at a restaurant fearing arrest as authorities crack down on undocumented migrants in the country better known for its own exodus.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of foreigners working without permits in Iraq, which, after emerging from decades of conflict, has become an unexpected destination for many seeking opportunities.
“I’ve been able to avoid the security forces and checkpoints,” said the 27-year-old, who has lived in Iraq for seven years and asked that AFP use a pseudonym to protect his identity.
Between 10 in the morning and 2 a.m. the next day, he toils at a shawarma shop in the holy city of Karbala, where millions of pilgrims congregate every year.
“My greatest fear is to be expelled back to Syria, where I’d have to do military service,” he said.

BACKGROUND

Authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers as the country seeks to diversify from the dominant hydrocarbons sector.

The Labor Ministry says the influx is mainly from Syria, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers.
Now, the authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers as the country seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector.
Many, like Rami, work in the service industry in Iraq.
One Baghdad restaurant owner admitted that he has to play cat and mouse with the authorities during inspections, asking some employees to make themselves scarce.
He said that not all those who work for him are registered because of the costly fees involved.
Some of the undocumented workers in Iraq first came as pilgrims. In July, Labour Minister Ahmed Assadi said his services investigated information that “50,000 Pakistani visitors” stayed on “to work illegally.”
Despite threats of expulsion because of the scale of the issue, the authorities, at the end of November, launched a scheme for “Syrian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani workers” to regularize their employment by applying online before Dec. 25.
The ministry says it will take legal action against anyone who brings in or employs undocumented foreign workers.
Rami has decided to play safe, even though “I want” to acquire legal employment status.
“But I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m waiting to see what my friends do, and then I’ll do the same.”
Current Iraqi law caps the number of foreign workers a company can employ at 50 percent, but the authorities now want to lower this to 30 percent.
“Today we only allow qualified workers for jobs requiring skills” that are not currently available, Labor Ministry spokesman Nijm Al-Aqabi said.
It’s a sensitive issue — for the past two decades, even a foreign workforce has dominated the robust oil sector. But now the authorities are seeking to favor Iraqis.
“There are large companies contracted to the government” which have been asked to limit “foreign worker numbers to 30 percent,” said Aqabi.
“This is in the interests of the domestic labor market,” he said, as 1.6 million Iraqis are unemployed.
He recognized that each household has the right to employ a foreign domestic worker, claiming this was work Iraqis did not want to do.
One agency launched in 2021 that brings in domestic workers from Niger, Ghana, and Ethiopia confirms the high demand.
“Before, we used to bring in 40 women, but now it’s around 100” a year, said an employee at the agency.
The employee said it was a trend picked up from rich countries in the Gulf.
“The situation in Iraq is getting better, and with higher salaries, Iraqi homeowners are looking for comfort.”
A domestic worker earns about $230 a month, but the authorities have quintupled the registration fee, with a work permit now costing more than $800.
In the summer, Human Rights Watch denounced what it called a campaign of arbitrary arrests and expulsions targeting Syrians, even those with the necessary paperwork.
HRW said that raids targeted both homes and workplaces.
Ahmed — another pseudonym — is a 31-year-old Syrian who has been undocumented in Iraq for the past year and a half.
He began as a cook in Baghdad and later moved to Karbala.
“Life is hard here — we don’t have any rights,” he said
“We come in illegally, and the security forces are after us.”
His wife did not accompany him. She stayed in Syria.
“I’d go back if I could,” said Ahmed. “But life there is very difficult. There’s no work.”

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Topics: Iraq

Family returns to Lebanon to find a crater where their 50-year-old home once stood

Updated 29 November 2024

AP

November 29, 2024 23:19

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Family returns to Lebanon to find a crater where their 50-year-old home once stood

Intense Israeli airstrikes over the past two months leveled entire neighborhoods in eastern and southern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut, which are predominantly Shiite areas of Lebanon where Hezbollah has a strong base of support

Updated 29 November 2024

AP

November 29, 2024 23:19

BAALBEK, Lebanon: In eastern Lebanon’s city of Baalbek, the Jawhari family gathered around a gaping crater where their home once stood, tears streaming as they tried to make sense of the destruction.
“It is heart-breaking. A heartache that there is no way we will ever recover from,” said Lina Jawhari, her voice breaking as she hugged relatives who came to support the family.
“Our world turned upside down in a second.”
The home, which was a gathering place for generations, was reduced to rubble by an Israeli airstrike on Nov. 1, leaving behind shattered memories and twisted fragments of a once-vibrant life.
The family, like thousands of Lebanese, were returning to check on their properties after the US-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect early Wednesday.

BACKGROUND

Israeli airstrikes have left a massive trail of destruction across Lebanon.

Intense Israeli airstrikes over the past two months leveled entire neighborhoods in eastern and southern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Nearly 1.2 million people have been displaced.
The airstrikes have left a massive trail of destruction across the country.
A photo of the Jawhari family’s home — taken on a phone by Louay Mustafa, Lina’s nephew — is a visual reminder of what had been. As the family sifted through the rubble, each fragment recovered called them to gather around it.
A worn letter sparked a collective cheer, while a photo of their late father triggered sobs. Reda Jawhari had built the house for his family and was a craftsman who left behind a legacy of metalwork. The sisters cried and hoped to find a piece of the mosque-church structure built by their father. Minutes later, they lifted a mangled piece of metal from the debris. They clung to it, determined to preserve a piece of his legacy.
“Different generations were raised with love ... Our life was filled with music, dance, and dabke (traditional dance). This is what the house is made up of. And suddenly, they destroyed our world. Our world turned upside down in a second. It is inconceivable. It is inconceivable,” Lina said.
Despite their determination, the pain of losing their home and the memories tied to it remains raw.
Rouba Jawhari, one of four sisters, had one regret.
“We are sad we did not take my mom and dad’s photos with us. If only we took the photos,” she said, clutching an ID card and a bag of photos and letters recovered from the rubble.
“It didn’t cross our mind. We thought it was two weeks and we will be back.”
The airstrike that obliterated the Jawhari home came without warning, striking at 1:30 p.m. on what was otherwise an ordinary Friday.
Their neighbor, Ali Wehbe, also lost his home. He had stepped out for food a few minutes before the missile hit and rushed back to find his brother searching for him under the rubble.
“Every brick holds a memory,” he said, gesturing to his library.
“Under every book you would find a story.”

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Topics: Battlefield Lebanon War on Gaza Palestine Gaza US

Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages

Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages

Kuwait to send Palestinian medical students to Gaza hospitals

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What to know about sudden rebel gains in Syria's 13-year war and why it matters

What to know about sudden rebel gains in Syria's 13-year war and why it matters

Militants, allies enter Syria’s second city Aleppo in lightning assault

Syrian authorities closed Aleppo airport and canceled all flights, military source says

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2 migrants dead, one missing off Tunisia: reports

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Tunisia migrant advocate held in first ‘terrorism’ probe: rights group

Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers

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UK signs deals with Iraq aimed at curbing irregular immigration

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Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages

Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages

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