Middle-East
5.2-magnitude quake hits Jordan-Syria region
A 5.2-magnitude earthquake jolted Jordan-Syria region at 0232 GMT on Thursday, the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences said.
Read: 3 earthquakes jolt district close to Nepal capital
The epicenter, with a depth of 10.0 km, was initially determined to be at 36.53 degrees north latitude and 36.30 degrees east longitude.
Read: Two earthquakes strike Nepal, sending tremors through the region
Destroying civilian housing and infrastructure is an international crime, warns UN expert
The world must act now to end the horrifying and massive attacks against civilian housing and infrastructure in Gaza, which comes at a tremendous cost to human life, a UN expert said on Wednesday.
“Carrying out hostilities with the knowledge that they will systematically destroy and damage civilian housing and infrastructure, rendering an entire city – such as Gaza city - uninhabitable for civilians is a war crime,” said Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.
Israel-Hamas war: Why India’s Congress is facing backlash over ‘support for Palestine’
The expert said systematic or widespread bombardment of housing, civilian objects and infrastructure are strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law, criminal law and human rights law.
“Such acts amount to war crimes and when directed against a civilian population, they also amount to crimes against humanity,” Rajagopal said.
In a recent report to the UN General Assembly, Rajagopal used the term “domicide” to refer to such systematic or widespread attacks on housing and civilian infrastructure that causes death and suffering.
In that report, the expert pointed out that domicide had been committed in a number of conflict affected countries in various regions of the world. “It is now being committed in Gaza, and the world continues to watch helplessly while core international human and humanitarian law norms are brazenly breached,” he said.
Attacks by Israel on targets within Gaza have destroyed or damaged 45 percent of all housing units in the Gaza strip, internally displaced about 1.5 million people and killed over 10,000 people, including over 80 UN staff.
Over 25,000 people have been wounded in the airstrikes. Sixty-seven percent of all fatalities are reportedly children or women. More than 2,300 people – among them 1300 children are reported missing, most of them likely trapped under the rubble.
International humanitarian law is based on the distinction between civilian and military objects, the expert said.
“Apartment buildings are not military objects. Hospitals and ambulances are not military objects. Refugee camps are not military objects. Schools are not military objects. Churches or mosques are not military objects. Water and electricity infrastructure for civilians are not military objects,” Rajagopal said.
“Civilian housing in Israel is also not a military object - launching indiscriminate rocket attacks on them from Gaza or elsewhere is a war crime,” he warned.
Islamic parties stage protest condemning Israeli attacks on Palestine
Even when civilian housing may be used by combatants to take shelter, as alleged in the attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp, launching attacks on entire apartment blocks is prohibited if they will lead to disproportionate damage, death and displacement of a large number of civilians, the UN expert warned.
“No asserted right of self-defence under international law can cover such attacks,” he said. “This is particularly the case when the right of self-defence is asserted in the context of an occupation.”
Ordering the evacuation of more than 1 million people from northern Gaza into southern Gaza, knowing that it will be impossible to provide adequate housing and humanitarian aid, while maintaining a blockade, cutting off water, food, fuel and medicine and repeatedly attacking evacuation routes and “safe zones” were a cruel and blatant violation of international humanitarian law, Rajagopal said. “These actions by Israel constitute international crimes.”
The call for a ceasefire in the recent UN General Assembly resolution must be followed by concrete measures to leverage parties to the conflict to abide by it, the Special Rapporteur said.
“The international community must consider the precedent set in the 1970s when measures to end apartheid in South Africa were taken by the General Assembly by unseating the South African delegation owing to widespread and systematic violations of human rights, which are inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter,” he said.
Bangladesh demands immediate end of Israeli brutalities in Palestine
“There can be no peace without justice,” Rajagopal said, urging the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged international crimes in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territory without delay or bias, and hold those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and apartheid, accountable. “All State parties to the Rome Statute must support efforts by the Court,” he said.
Growing numbers of Palestinians flee on foot as Israel says its troops are battling inside Gaza City
Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing south on foot with only what they can carry after running out of food and water in the north, a U.N. agency said Wednesday, as Israel said its troops were battling Hamas militants deep inside Gaza City.
Over 70% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have already fled their homes, but the growing numbers making their way south point to an increasingly desperate situation in and around Gaza's largest city, which has come under heavy Israeli bombardment.
The war triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 assault inside Israel has entered a second month, with an increasingly dire humanitarian situation inside the besieged Palestinian enclave and no end in sight.
Israel has said its war to end Hamas' rule and crush its military capabilities will be long and difficult, and that it will maintain some form of control over the coastal enclave indefinitely. Support for the war remains strong inside Israel, where the focus has been on the plight of the more than 240 hostages held by Hamas and other militant groups.
Read: Israel fights Hamas deep in Gaza City and foresees control of enclave’s security after war
About 15,000 people fled northern Gaza on Tuesday, triple the number that left Monday, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. They are using Gaza's main north-south highway during a daily four-hour window announced by Israel.
Those fleeing include children, the elderly and people with disabilities, and most walked with minimal belongings, the U.N. agency said. Some say they had to cross Israeli checkpoints, where they saw people being arrested, while others held their hands in the air and raised white flags while passing Israeli tanks.
Residents reported loud explosions overnight into Wednesday across Gaza City and in its Shati refugee camp, which houses Palestinian families who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its establishment.
“The bombings were heavy and close,” said Mohamed Abed, who lives in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. He said residents panicked when they heard the news late Tuesday that Israeli ground forces were fighting deep inside the city.
The Israeli military said it killed one of Hamas' leading developers of rockets and other weapons, without saying where he was killed. Hamas has denied that Israeli troops have made any significant gains or entered Gaza City. It was not possible to independently confirm battlefield claims from either side.
Read: UN Security Council fails to agree on Israel-Hamas war as Gaza death toll passes 10,000
Israel is focusing its operations on Gaza City, which was home to some 650,000 people before the war and where the military says Hamas has its central command and a vast labyrinth of tunnels. Hundreds of thousands have heeded Israeli orders to flee the north in recent weeks, even though Israel also routinely strikes what it says are militant targets in the south, often killing civilians.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians remain in the north, many sheltering at hospitals or U.N. schools. The north has been without running water for weeks, and the U.N. agency said the last functioning bakeries shut down on Tuesday for lack of fuel, water and flour. Hospitals running low on supplies are performing surgeries — including amputations — without anesthesia, it said.
Majed Haroun, who lives in Gaza City, said women and children go door to door asking for food, while those in shelters rely on local donations. “They should allow aid for those children,” he said.
The situation is little better in the south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are packed into U.N.-run schools and other facilities. At one packed shelter, 600 people must share a single toilet, according to the U.N. office.
A month of relentless bombardment in Gaza since the Hamas attack has killed more than 10,300 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose figures have largely held up under scrutiny after previous wars. More than 2,300 are believed to have been buried by strikes that in some cases have demolished entire city blocks.
In the Oct. 7 incursion, Hamas militants killed over 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and captured 242, including men, women, children and older adults. Israel says 30 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began, and Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel on a daily basis.
The death toll on both sides is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Israeli officials say thousands of Palestinian militants have been killed, and blame civilian deaths on Hamas because it operates in residential areas. Gaza's Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that Israel would maintain “overall security responsibility” in Gaza for an “indefinite period” after defeating Hamas.
Israel's main ally, the United States, is opposed to any reoccupation of the territory, from which Israel removed soldiers and settlers in 2005.
The U.S. has suggested that a revitalized Palestinian Authority could govern Gaza. But the internationally recognized PA, whose forces were driven out of Gaza by Hamas 16 years ago, says it would only do so as part of a solution to the conflict that creates a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem — territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
Israel's government was staunchly opposed to Palestinian statehood even before the Oct. 7 attack. Along with Egypt, it has maintained a crippling blockade on Gaza since Hamas seized power in 2007.
Hundreds of trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid is far short of mounting needs. Egypt’s Rafah crossing has also opened to allow hundreds of foreign passport holders and medical patients to leave Gaza.
Read: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib accuses Biden of supporting genocide in Gaza, says colleagues more focused on silencing her
The war has stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the war began, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles with Israeli forces during arrest raids.
Some 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities along the borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib accuses Biden of supporting genocide in Gaza, says colleagues more focused on silencing her
Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American member of Congress, has released a video in which she has accused US President Joe Biden of allowing genocide in Gaza.
The White House and some Democrats reacted sharply to that, reports BBC.
Tlaib declines to visit West Bank, citing Israeli conditions
Republicans in the House have introduced two separate measures to censure her amid criticism of her remarks from both parties.
Tlaib stated that her colleagues were "more focused on silencing me than they are on saving lives".
A month into war, Netanyahu says Israel will have an 'overall security' role in Gaza indefinitely
Tlaib, a Democrat, addressed Biden directly in a video shared to social media on Friday, calling for a cease-fire.
It included videos of Biden expressing his support for Israel, as well as footage of those killed and wounded in Gaza and pro-Palestinian marches around the United States.
Civilians fleeing northern Gaza's combat zone report a terrifying journey on foot past Israeli tanks
"Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people," titles at the end of the video read. "The American people won't forget."
People in the video are also shouting the phrase "from the river to the sea," which advocates for Palestinian rule of all area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel.
According to Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the phrase is a call to destroy the state of Israel.
Some pro-Palestinian activists argue that the majority of those singing it are asking for an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza, rather than the destruction of Israel itself, the BBC report added.
Tlaib is one of just three Muslim legislators in US Congress. She has long enraged party officials and pro-Israel organisations with her unwavering condemnation of Israel.
The slogan is "an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate," she said defending her latest remarks.
However, the remark has sparked outrage from all quarters, even Democratic friends in her home state.
A month into war, Netanyahu says Israel will have an 'overall security' role in Gaza indefinitely
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will have “overall security responsibility” in Gaza for an indefinite period after its war with Hamas, the clearest indication yet that Israel plans to maintain control over the coastal enclave that is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians.
In an interview with ABC News that aired late Monday, Netanyahu expressed openness to “little pauses” in the fighting to facilitate the release of some of the more than 240 captives seized by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack into Israel, which triggered the war exactly one month ago.
But he ruled out any general cease-fire without the release of all the hostages, and the White House said there was no agreement with United States President Joe Biden's call for a broader humanitarian pause after a phone call between the leaders on Monday.
Read: Israeli forces cut off north Gaza as Palestinian death toll from monthlong war passes 10,000
Israeli troops have been battling Palestinian militants inside Gaza for over a week, and have succeeded in cutting the territory in half and encircling Gaza City.
The war has come at a staggering cost. Airstrikes have leveled entire city blocks across the territory, and around 70% of the population has fled their homes, with many heeding Israeli orders to head to the southern part of the besieged territory, which is also being bombed. Food, medicine, fuel and water are running low, and United Nations-run schools-turned-shelters are overflowing.
The Palestinian death toll has surpassed 10,000, the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said Monday, including over 4,100 children. More than 2,300 people are missing and believed to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, the ministry said. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of fighters.
About 1,400 people in Israel have died, mostly civilians killed in the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war. Israel has vowed to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.
Israel is focused on Gaza City, which before the war was home to some 650,000 people — about equal to the population of Washington, D.C. Israel says Hamas has extensive militant infrastructure in the city, including a vast tunnel network, and accuses it of using civilians as human shields.
Several hundred thousand people are believed to remain in the north in the assault’s path. The military says a one-way corridor for residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas to flee south remains available. But many are afraid to use the route, part of which is held by Israeli troops.
Residents in northern Gaza reported heavy battles overnight into Tuesday morning in the outskirts of Gaza City. The Shati refugee camp, a built-up district housing refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants, has been heavily bombarded from the air and sea over the past two days, residents said.
Marwan Abdullah, who is among thousands of people sheltering at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, said they heard constant explosions overnight as ambulances brought dead and wounded in from the Shati camp. “We couldn’t sleep. Things get worse day by day,” he said.
Read: Jordan airdrops medical supplies to Gaza hospital
A strike early Monday hit the roof of Shifa Hospital, killing a number of displaced people sheltering on its top floor and destroying solar panels, said Mohamed Zaqout, general manager of all hospitals in Gaza. The panels have been helping keep power on in the facility, which has been reduced to using one generator because of lack of fuel.
In southern Gaza, where Palestinians have been told to seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike destroyed several homes early Tuesday in the town of Khan Younis. First responders pulled five bodies — including three dead children — from the rubble, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.
The war has also stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the war began, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles with Israeli forces during arrest raids.
Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community and considers the entire city its capital. It has built settlements across the occupied West Bank that are now home to over 500,000 Jewish settlers.
Israeli officials have said little about their plans for a post-Hamas Gaza, while indicating they don't want to reoccupy the territory. Israel withdrew its troops and more than 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 but maintained control over the territory's airspace, coastline, population registry and all but one of its border crossings.
Hamas seized power from forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas two years later, confining his Palestinian Authority to parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Since then, Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza to varying degrees. Israel says the blockade is needed to keep Hamas from rearming, while the Palestinians and rights groups see it as a form of collective punishment.
Read: Blinken meets Palestinian leader in West Bank, stepping up Mideast diplomacy as Gaza war escalates
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who wrapped up a dayslong trip to the region on Monday, has suggested a revitalized Palestinian Authority could govern Gaza. But Abbas has said it would only do so as part of a solution to the conflict that establishes a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. Israel's government is strongly opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu told ABC News that Gaza should be governed by “those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas," without elaborating.
“I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility, because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” he said.
The military says 30 Israeli troops have been killed since the ground offensive began over a week ago. Hamas and other militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, disrupting daily life even as most are intercepted or fall in open areas. Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated from communities near the volatile borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Hundreds of trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid is far short of mounting needs. Egypt's Rafah Crossing has also opened to allow hundreds of foreign passport holders and medical patients to leave Gaza.
Israeli forces cut off north Gaza as Palestinian death toll from monthlong war passes 10,000
Israeli forces severed northern Gaza from the rest of the besieged territory and pounded it with intense airstrikes overnight into Monday, setting the stage for an expected push into the dense confines of Gaza City and an even bloodier phase of the month-old war.
Already, the Palestinian death toll passed 10,000, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday. The ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. Some 1,400 Israelis have died, mostly civilians killed in the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war.
The figures mark a grim milestone in what has quickly become the deadliest round of Israeli-Palestinian violence since Israel's establishment 75 years ago, with no end in sight as Israel vows to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.
Jordan airdrops medical supplies to Gaza hospital
Casualties are only likely to rise as the war turns to close urban combat. Troops are expected to enter Gaza City soon, Israeli media reported, and Palestinian militants who have had years to prepare are likely to fight street by street, launching ambushes from a vast network of tunnels.
"We're closing in on them," said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman. "We've completed our encirclement, separating Hamas strongholds in the north from the south."
The military said it struck 450 targets overnight and ground troops took over a Hamas compound. A one-way corridor for residents to flee south remains available for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remain in Gaza City and other parts of the north, according to the military.
Some 1.5 million Palestinians, or around 70% of Gaza's population, have fled their homes since the war began. Food, medicine, fuel and water are running low, and U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters are beyond capacity. Many people are sleeping on the streets outside.
Mobile phone and internet service went down overnight, the third territory-wide outage since the start of the war, but was gradually restored on Monday. Aid workers say the outages make it even harder for civilians to seek safety or call ambulances.
Israel has so far rejected U.S. suggestions for a pause in fighting to facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries and the release of some of the estimated 240 hostages seized by Hamas in its raid. Israel has also dismissed calls for a broader cease-fire from increasingly alarmed Arab countries — including Jordan and Egypt, which made peace with it decades ago.
After days of intense diplomacy around the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up his tour of the region on Monday, saying efforts to secure a humanitarian pause, negotiate the release of hostages and plan for a post-Hamas Gaza were still "a work in progress" without pointing to any concrete achievements.
Israeli warplanes hit refugee camps in Gaza while UN agencies call siege an 'outrage'
The war has also stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. In another sign of growing unrest, a Palestinian man stabbed and wounded two members of Israel's paramilitary Border Police in east Jerusalem before being shot dead, according to police and an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with Gaza and the West Bank, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community and considers the entire city its capital.
In northern Gaza, a Jordanian military cargo plane air-dropped medical aid to a field hospital, King Abdullah II said early Monday. It appeared to be the first such airdrop of the war, raising the possibility of another avenue for aid delivery besides Egypt's Rafah crossing, which has so far been the only entry point.
Over 450 trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid that has come through the Rafah crossing is insufficient to meet mounting needs in the territory, which is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians.
The crossing was closed on Saturday and Sunday because of a dispute among Israel, Egypt and Hamas. But it reopened Monday for the evacuation of patients and foreign passport holders, according to Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority.
Northern Gaza is facing a severe water shortage, as there is no fuel to pump from municipal wells and Israel shut off the region's main line. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs said seven water facilities across Gaza were struck over the last two days and sustained "major damage," raising the risk of sewage flooding. Israel has restored two water pipelines in central and southern Gaza, the U.N. said.
Protest marches from US to Berlin call for immediate halt to Israeli bombing of Gaza
Some 800,000 people have heeded Israeli military orders to flee to southern Gaza. Some 2,000 people, many carrying only what they could hold in their arms, walked down Gaza's main north-south highway on Sunday. "The children saw tanks for the first time. Oh world, have mercy on us," said one Palestinian man, who declined to give his name.
But Israeli bombardments have continued across the territory, and strikes in central and southern Gaza — the purported safe zone — killed dozens of people on Sunday. Israel blames civilian casualties on Hamas, accusing the militants of operating in residential neighborhoods.
After another strike Monday, in the southern town of Khan Younis, men dug through the rubble with sledgehammers and their bare hands. A young boy caked in dust screamed as he was rolled onto a stretcher and carried away. At least two people were killed, according to an AP reporter at the scene.
Earlier Monday, Palestinians held a mass funeral for 66 people outside a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. The bodies were wrapped in white sheets on the ground outside the hospital morgue. A man with bandages wrapped around his head placed his hand on a child's body and wept.
The Health Ministry said that 10,022 people have been killed in Gaza, including over 4,100 children and 2,600 women.
Meanwhile, four civilians were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in south Lebanon late Sunday, including three children, a local civil defense official and state-run media reported. The Israeli military said it was reviewing the strike, after initially saying it had struck Hezbollah targets following anti-tank fire that killed an Israeli civilian. Hezbollah said it fired Grad rockets into Israel in response.
In the overnight strikes in Gaza, the Israeli military said it had killed a senior Hamas militant, identified as Jamal Mussa, who had allegedly carried out a shooting attack against Israeli soldiers in Gaza in 1993.
It said 30 Israeli troops have been killed since the ground offensive began over a week ago. Hamas and other militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, disrupting daily life even as most are intercepted or fall in open areas. Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated from communities near the volatile borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Jordan airdrops medical supplies to Gaza hospital
A Jordanian Royal Air Force aircraft Monday airdropped urgent medical supplies to the Jordanian field hospital in the Gaza Strip, reported Jordan's state-run Petra News Agency.
The hospital was on the verge of running out of supplies due to the delay in land aid delivering to the besieged strip, and the action came as a continuation of Jordan's efforts to support people in Gaza, said the report, citing an unnamed military source from the Jordanian Armed Forces.
Read: Israeli warplanes hit refugee camps in Gaza while UN agencies call siege an 'outrage'
"Our fearless air force personnel airdropped at midnight urgent medical aid to the Jordanian field hospital in Gaza," said King Abdullah II of Jordan on his X account Monday, reaffirming his support for the Palestinian people.
The Jordanian field hospital has been treating the wounded from Gaza despite all the challenges and difficulties and performing its humanitarian role to alleviate the suffering of people in the Palestinian enclave, the report said.
Read: Blinken meets Palestinian leader in West Bank, stepping up Mideast diplomacy as Gaza war escalates
Israeli warplanes hit refugee camps in Gaza while UN agencies call siege an 'outrage'
Israeli airstrikes hit two refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing scores of people, health officials said. The strikes came as the U.S. keeps urging Israel to take a humanitarian pause from its relentless bombardment of Gaza and rising civilian deaths.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Ramallah in the West Bank for a previously unannounced meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Blinken later flew to Baghdad for talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. On Saturday Blinken met with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan, after holding talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insists there could be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released. President Joe Biden suggested that progress was being made on the humanitarian pause.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war surpassed 9,700 with more than 4,000 of them children and minors, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 140 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the fighting, and 242 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.
Roughly 1,100 people have left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing since Wednesday under an apparent agreement among the United States, Egypt, Israel and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.
Currently:
— Gaza has lost telecom contact again, while Israel’s military announces it has surrounded Gaza City.
— Families of Israel hostages fear the world will forget their loved ones.
— Protest marches from U.S. to Berlin call for immediate halt to bombing.
— These numbers show the staggering toll of the Israel-Hamas war.
— A U.N. official says the average Palestinian in Gaza is living on two pieces of bread a day.
— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s what is happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
EMOTIONAL SCENES AS AUSTRALIANS WHO LEFT GAZA ARRIVE AT SYDNEY AIRPORT
SYDNEY — A dozen Australians who fled the war in Gaza arrived in Sydney on Sunday after traveling last week through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
Elated evacuee Sara El-Masry told Nine News on arrival at Sydney Airport: “It means the world to me that we were able to leave safely and we were able to come here and see their (family) faces one more time. I honestly didn’t think I would make it.”
Another seven evacuees returned to other Australian cities on Saturday. The Australian government continues to press for more Australians to be allowed to leave Gaza. There are about 67 citizens, permanent residents and their family members that the Australian government says it is trying to help leave Gaza.
Read: Blinken meets Palestinian leader in West Bank, stepping up Mideast diplomacy as Gaza war escalates
US MILITARY ACKNOWLEDGES POSITIONING SUBMARINE IN MIDEAST
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The U.S. military has acknowledged positioning a nuclear-capable submarine in the Middle East.
It provided no other details in its online statement Sunday, though it posted an image that appeared to show a submarine in Egypt’s Suez Canal near its Suez Canal Bridge.
U.S. acknowledgment of an Ohio-class submarine location is incredibly rare as they represent part of America's so-called “nuclear triad” of atomic weapons — which also includes land-based ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs aboard strategic bombers.
Several Ohio-class submarines instead carry cruise missiles and the capability to deploy with special operations forces, so it’s unclear if the submarine operating now in the Mideast carries nuclear ballistic missiles.
The U.S. has deployed submarines into the region before and announced its recent presence as tensions were high with Iran.
Central Command separately released an image of a nuclear-capable B-1 bomber also operating in the Mideast on Sunday.
UN AGENCIES AND HUMANITARIAN ORGS CALL FOR IMMEDIATE CEASE-FIRE
UNITED NATIONS – The heads of 11 U.N. agencies and six humanitarian organizations issued a joint plea for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, the protection of civilians, and the swift entry to Gaza of food, water, medicine and fuel.
In a statement issued Sunday night, they called Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attacks in Israel “horrific.”
“However, the horrific killings of even more civilians in Gaza is an outrage, as is cutting off 2.2 million Palestinians from food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” the heads of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory said.
Read: Protest marches from US to Berlin call for immediate halt to Israeli bombing of Gaza
The U.N. and humanitarian organizations said more than 23,000 injured people need immediate treatment and hospitals are overstretched.
Protest marches from US to Berlin call for immediate halt to Israeli bombing of Gaza
From Washington to Milan to Paris, tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched Saturday, calling for a halt to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
The marches reflected growing disquiet about the mounting civilian casualty toll and suffering from the Israel-Hamas war. Protesters, particularly in countries with large Muslim populations, including the U.S., U.K. and France, expressed disillusionment with their governments for supporting Israel while its bombardments of hospitals and residential areas in the Gaza strip intensify.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 9,448, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In Israel, more than 1,400 people have been killed, most of them in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the war.
In the U.S., thousands converged on the nation's capital to protest the Biden administration’s support of Israel and its continued military campaign in Gaza. “Palestine will be free,” demonstrators donning black and white keffiyehs chanted as an enormous Palestinian flag was unfurled by a crowd that filled Pennsylvania Avenue — the street leading up to the White House.
Leveling direct criticism of President Joe Biden, Renad Dayem of Cleveland said she made the trip with her family so her children would know "the Palestinian people are resilient — and we want a leader who won't be a puppet to the Israeli government.”
Dozens of small white body bags with the names of children killed by Israeli missiles lined the street and demonstrators held signs calling for an immediate cease-fire.
Protesters held signs and banners with messages such as “Biden betrays us” and “In November we remember,” highlighting how the issue could be a factor in Biden's reelection bid.
Jinane Ennasri, a 27 year-old New York resident, said the Biden administration’s support of Israel despite the thousands of Palestinian deaths has made her rethink voting in the 2024 presidential election, where Biden will likely face GOP front-runner Donald Trump. “We thought he would represent us, but he doesn’t,” she said, ”and our generation is not afraid to put elected officials in their place.”
Ennasri, like many demonstrators, said they would likely sit out the 2024 election.
Biden was in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the weekend and didn't comment on the protests. In a brief exchange with reporters as he left St. Edmond Roman Catholic Church on Saturday, he suggested there has been some forward movement in the U.S efforts to persuade Israel to agree to a humanitarian pause, answering “yes” when asked if there was progress.
Steve Strauss, a 73 year-old Baltimore resident, said he is one of many Jewish people protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. “They are trying to kill as many Palestinians as they can get away with," Strauss said. ”I am here to stand up and be a voice for the people who are oppressed.”
In Paris, several thousand protesters called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and some shouted “Israel, assassin!”
Banners on a sound-system truck at the Paris march through rain-dampened streets read: “Stop the massacre in Gaza.” Demonstrators, many carrying Palestinian flags, chanted “Palestine will live, Palestine will win.”
Demonstrators also took aim at French President Emmanuel Macron, chanting “Macron, accomplice.”
Paris’ police chief authorized the march from République to Nation, two large plazas in eastern Paris, but vowed that any behavior deemed antisemitic or sympathetic to terrorism would not be tolerated.
Multiple countries in Europe have reported increasing antisemitic attacks and incidents since Oct. 7.
In an attack Saturday, an assailant knocked on the door of a Jewish woman in the French city of Lyon and, when she opened, said “Hello” before stabbing her twice in the stomach, according to the woman’s lawyer, Stéphane Drai, who spoke to broadcaster BFM. He said police also found a swastika on the woman’s door. The woman was being treated in a hospital and her life was not in danger, the lawyer said.
At the London rally, the Metropolitan Police said its officers made 11 arrests, including one on a terrorism charge for displaying a placard that could incite hatred. The police force had forewarned that it would also monitor social media and use facial recognition to spot criminal behavior.
On Friday, two women who attended a pro-Palestinian march three weeks ago were charged under the U.K.’s Terrorism Act for displaying images on their clothing of paragliders. In its Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel, Hamas employed paragliders to get some fighters across the border between Gaza and southern Israel. Prosecutors said the images aroused suspicion they were supporters of Hamas, which U.K. authorities regard as a terrorist group.
In Berlin, around 1,000 police officers were deployed to ensure order after previous pro-Palestinian protests turned violent. German news agency dpa reported that about 6,000 protesters marched through the center of the German capital. Police banned any kind of public or written statements that are antisemitic, anti-Israeli or glorify violence or terror. Several thousand protesters also marched through the west German city of Duesseldorf.
In Romania’s capital, hundreds gathered in central Bucharest, many waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Save the children from Gaza.”
At a rally by several thousand people in Milan, Matteo Salvini, a deputy prime minister, spoke out against antisemitism, calling it “a cancer, a virulent plague, something disgusting.’’
In another part of Milan, a pro-Palestinian rally drew about 4,000 people and there was also a march by several thousand in Rome. Yara Abushab, a 22-year-old medical student from Gaza University, who has been in Italy since Oct. 1, was among the participants and described Oct. 7 as a watershed for her.
“They bombed my university, my hospital. I lost a lot of loved ones and right now the last time I heard something from my family was a week ago,” she said. “The situation is indescribable.”
END/UNB/AP/TT
Blinken meets Palestinian leader in West Bank, stepping up Mideast diplomacy as Gaza war escalates
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought his frenetic Mideast diplomatic push on the Israel-Hamas war to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his latest bid to ease civilian suffering in the Gaza Strip and begin to sketch out a post-conflict scenario for the territory.
Blinken traveled to Ramallah for his previously unannounced visit in an armored motorcade and under tight security just hours after Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens, health officials said. Despite the secrecy and the State Department refusing to confirm the trip until after Blinken had physically left the West Bank, protests erupted against his visit and U.S. support for Israel as word of his arrival leaked.
Warplanes strike Gaza refugee camp as Israel rejects US push for a pause in fighting
Aside from pleasantries, neither man spoke as they greeted each other in front of cameras and the meeting ended without any public comment. It was not immediately clear if the lack of words indicated the meeting had gone poorly.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Blinken reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance and resumption of essential services in Gaza and made clear that Palestinians must not be forcibly displaced.
Israeli strikes kill multiple civilians at shelters in Gaza combat zone
Blinken and Abbas discussed efforts to restore calm and stability in the West Bank, including the need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians and hold those accountable responsible, Miller said, in reference to violence being committed by Israeli settlers.
The meeting with Abbas, whose Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority has not been a factor in Gaza since Hamas took it over by force in 2007, came at the start of Blinken’s third day of an intense Middle East tour – his second since the war began with a surprise Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Blinken had visited Israel and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday before decamping to Jordan for meetings with senior Arab officials on Saturday.
At each stop, Blinken has offered firm U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself but also stressed that it must adhere to the laws of war, protect civilians and increase humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza. To do that, as well as to ease the flow of foreigners fleeing Gaza, he has made the case that Israel should implement rolling humanitarian pauses to its airstrikes and ground operations, something that Netanyahu has thus far flatly rejected.
U.S. officials believe that Netanyahu may soften his opposition if he can be convinced that it is in Israel’s strategic interests to ease the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The soaring death toll has sparked growing international anger, with tens of thousands from Washington to Berlin taking to the streets over the weekend to demand an immediate cease-fire.
The Arab foreign ministers that Blinken met with on Saturday in Amman – from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – issued the same demand.
But Blinken said the U.S. would not push for one.
“It is our view now that a cease-fire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” he said. Instead he said that temporary humanitarian pauses in fighting would be critical to protecting civilians, getting aid in and getting foreign nationals out “while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective, the defeat of Hamas.”
Arab officials said it was far too soon to discuss one of Blinken’s main agenda items, Gaza’s postwar future. Stopping the killing and restoring steady humanitarian aid are immediate that must be addressed first, they said.
“How can we even entertain what will happen next?” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi. “We need to get our priorities straight.”
Arab states are resisting American suggestions that they play a larger role in resolving crisis, expressing outrage at the civilian toll of the Israeli military operations but believing Gaza to be a problem largely of Israel’s own making.
But U.S. officials believe Arab backing, no matter how modest, will be critical to efforts to ease the worsening conditions in Gaza and lay the groundwork for what would replace Hamas as the territory’s governing authority, if and when Israel succeeds in eradicating the group.
Blinken tries to cajole wary Arabs on support for post-conflict Gaza as Israel's war intensifies
Still ideas on Gaza’s future governance are few and far between. Blinken and other U.S. officials are offering a vague outline that it might include a combination of a revitalized Palestinian Authority along with international organizations and potentially a peacekeeping force. U.S. officials acknowledge these ideas have been met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.