Middle-East
As Gaza’s doctors struggle to save lives, many lose their own in Israeli airstrikes
Dr. Hassan Hamdan was one of the few trained plastic surgeons in Gaza, a specialist in wound reconstruction. His skills were vitally needed as Israel’s military onslaught filled hospitals with patients torn by blasts and shrapnel, so the 65-year-old came out of retirement to help.
Earlier this month, an Israeli airstrike killed him along with his wife, son, two daughters, a daughter-in-law, a son-in-law, six grandchildren and one other person, as his family sheltered in their home in an Israeli-declared “safe zone.”
Israel’s 9-month-old war with Hamas in Gaza has decimated the territory’s medical system. It has not only wreaked physical destruction on hospitals and health facilities, it has devastated Gaza’s medical personnel. More than 500 health care workers have been killed since October, according to the U.N.
Among them were many specialists like Hamdan.
Dr. Ahmed al-Maqadma, also a reconstructive surgeon and a former fellow at U.K. Royal College, was found shot to death alongside his mother, a general practitioner, on a street outside Gaza City’s Shifa hospital after a two-week raid on the facility by Israeli forces in April.
One of Gaza’s most prominent fertility doctors, Omar Ferwana, was killed along with his family in a strike on his home in October. The territory’s only liver transplant doctor, Hamam Alloh, was killed in a hit on his home in Gaza City.
Israeli strikes in November on a northern Gaza hospital killed two doctors working with Doctors Without Borders. They are among six staffers killed from the international charity, which focuses on reconstructive and orthopedic surgeries, physiotherapy and burn care in Gaza.
Israel has detained doctors and medical staff. At least two have died in Israeli detention, allegedly of ill-treatment: the head of Shifa's orthopedics department, Adnan al-Bursh, and the head of a women’s hospital, Iyad al-Rantisi. Israel has not returned either man's body. Hundreds of other medical workers have been displaced or left Gaza altogether.
Along with the personal toll, their deaths rob Gaza’s medical system of their skills when they have become crucial.
Since the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7 — which left some 1,200 people dead and 250 kidnapped — Israel's campaign has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza and wounded more than 88,000, according to local health officials. Malnutrition and disease have become widespread as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians cram into squalid tent camps.
Dr. Adam Hamawy, a former U.S. Army combat plastic surgeon who volunteered in Gaza in May, said Hamdan’s death “leaves a significant void that will be hard to fill.”
Like many in Gaza, he believes Israel is deliberately destroying the health system, pointing to how Israeli forces have raided hospitals, destroyed medical complexes, fired on medical convoys and hit ambulances. Israel says it is targeting Hamas, which it says uses hospitals as command centers and ambulances for transport. The military has provided limited evidence for its claims.
Twenty-three of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are out of service, and the rest are only partially functioning, according to the latest U.N. figures. Only five field hospitals out of nine are operational. And more than 60% of Gaza’s primary health facilities have shut down.
Hamdan’s death leaves only one other specialist in reconstructive plastic surgery in Gaza. Other doctors have had to learn the skills of repairing major wounds on the job amid relentless daily waves of maimed patients.
Hamawy saw firsthand the need during his work in Gaza as part of an international medical team that came to help the territory’s health workers.
During three weeks at the European General Hospital in Khan Younis, he said he performed 120 surgeries, more than half of them on children, and all but one of them for treatment and reconstruction of war wounds. Two colleagues at the hospital were killed in strikes on their homes while he was there, and he spoke to doctors who had been released from Israeli detention and described being tortured, he said.
Hamawy said a general surgeon at the hospital stepped in to fill the demand for plastic surgeons, but he had no formal training. Five medical students volunteered with him.
They “are doing their best to fill in the gap,” Hamawy said.
On July 2, the European General Hospital evacuated its staff and patients, fearing it would be attacked. That left Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah and a field hospital in Rafah as the only facilities able to offer reconstructive surgery, said Dr. Ahmed al-Mokhallalati, Gaza's last reconstructive plastic surgery specialist.
Al-Mokhallalati said he has been rushing between hospitals, at one point overseeing treatment for 400 patients in one and 500 in another. At the Rafah field hospital, he was doing up to 10 surgeries a day.
“It is a very critical situation,” he said.
Hamdan founded the burns and plastic surgery department in Khan Younis’ Nasser Medical complex in 2002, after serving at the territory’s first such unit, at Shifa hospital. He headed the department at Nasser until 2019, when he retired.
When the Israeli army invaded Hamdan's home city of Khan Younis in December, he returned as a volunteer at Nasser, Gaza’s second largest hospital, said his son Osama Hamdan, an orthopedic surgeon. His colleagues said he was cool under pressure. “The smile never left his face,” said Dr. Mohamad Awad, a surgeon who worked with him.
Soon after, Israeli forces besieged and raided Nasser Hospital, forcing its evacuation. Hamdan was displaced, taking shelter in the home of one of his daughters in Deir al-Balah, further north.
Troops occupied Nasser hospital for weeks, wreaking extensive damage. After they withdrew, the facility was rehabilitated. In mid-June, Hamdan returned home and was discussing returning to work with hospital officials.
On July 2, Israel ordered another evacuation of Khan Younis. Hamdan and his family fled again, returning to his daughter’s home in Deir al-Balah.
Only hours after they arrived, an airstrike hit the building on July 3 – “a direct hit with two rockets on my sister’s apartment,” Osama Hamdan said. He said no one in the family was affiliated with militant groups.
The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment on the strike.
Osama was on duty in the emergency room at Nasser hospital when he received the call. His wife and two sons – 3 and 5 years old – were among those killed.
“I was only able to collect some body parts of my kids and their mother because of how huge the explosion was,” he said.
One of his sisters died days later in the hospital from her wounds. Another sister remains in intensive care.
Osama is feeling partially responsible. “I had pressed him to leave Khan Younis,” he said in a text message, marked with two broken hearts emojis.
In attack that shocks quiet Oman, gunmen kill 6 and wound dozens more at a Shiite mosque
Several gunmen burst into a Shiite mosque in the Gulf Arab state of Oman and opened fire, killing six people and wounding nearly 30 more, authorities said Tuesday, stunning the peaceful sultanate and making it the country's deadliest such attack in recent memory.
The Islamic State extremist group, through an affiliated news agency, claimed responsibility for the attack in the capital, Muscat, without providing evidence. It marked the first time that the Sunni Muslim extremist group has asserted responsibility for an attack in Oman.
That the Islamic State, which considers Shiites to be heretics, targeted Shiite worshippers on the eve of their holy day is nothing new — the group in January claimed responsibility for an attack in Shiite-majority Iran that killed 84 people.
Most shocking, analysts say, is that the attack happened in Oman, a quiet country on the southeastern edge of the Arabian peninsula with well-trained security forces, a policy of non-intervention and a majority population of Ibadi Muslims, a more liberal offshoot of Islam predating the Sunni-Shiite split.
“It illustrates that ISIS thinks outside of the box and tries to do things that most people think wouldn’t be possible, taking advantage of small failures within security architectures of different countries,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
There is no known branch of the Islamic State in Oman, a country that tends to stay out of the sectarian disputes roiling the wider region. But Islamic extremists, including branches of the Islamic State and al-Qaida, have a foothold in neighboring war-torn Yemen.
The Royal Oman Police said the shooting killed five worshippers in the mosque in Muscat's Wadi Kabir neighborhood and one police officer. Omani authorities did not specify the number of gunmen or provide their nationalities but said security forces had killed three attackers.
At least 28 people were wounded in the shooting, Omani police added, among them officers and medics. The mosque was packed with worshippers holding special prayers on the eve of the Shiite mourning festival of Ashoura, which marks the 7th century martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Hussein, at Karbala in modern-day Iraq.
Pakistan identified four of the dead as its citizens. Nearly 2 million migrants, many from Pakistan and elsewhere in South Asia, help power Oman's economy by filling low-skilled jobs in construction and other fields.
Analysts described the rare shooting as the latest example that the Islamic State, after losing its territory in Iraq and Syria some five years ago, is seeking to strike farther afield.
“It’s part of their reorganization from being a group with most of its actions in Iraq and Syria to using their resources in a global network," Zelin said, citing the deadly attack in March on a Moscow concert hall and other bombings claimed by the group's regional affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan, across Afghanistan and Pakistan. “It makes them more resilient in some ways."
The U.S. Embassy in Muscat issued a security alert, warning citizens to “stay vigilant.”
Like other sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf, Oman retains tight controls on traditional media. Its state news agencies on Tuesday praised authorities' success in containing the chaos but offered scant information about the state of investigations or the attack itself.
In an interview with the Times of Oman, an English-language daily, an unidentified Pakistani worshipper at the mosque described scenes of fear and mayhem and reported that gunfire — both the attack and subsequent shoot-out with Omani police — lasted some hour and a half.
Statements of condolence and outrage came from around the region, where Oman plays a sensitive role.
The sultanate maintains friendly relations both with Saudi Arabia, the heartland of traditionalist Sunni Islam, and its regional rival, the Shiite power Iran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said it stood “in solidarity with Oman against such attempts to sow discord.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was “deeply saddened” by the shooting and offered Pakistan's help in the investigation.
Israeli strikes in southern, central Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians, including in 'safe zone'
Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza overnight and into Tuesday, including one that struck an Israeli-declared “safe zone” crowded with thousands of displaced people.
Airstrikes in recent days have brought a constant drumbeat of deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, even as Israel has pulled back or scaled down major ground offensives in the north and south. Almost daily strikes have hit the “safe zone” covering some 60 square kilometers (23 square miles) along the Mediterranean coast, where Israel told fleeing Palestinians to take refuge to escape ground assaults. Israel has said it is pursuing Hamas militants who are hiding among civilians after offensives uprooted underground tunnel networks.
Tuesday's deadliest strike hit a main street lined with market stalls outside the southern city of Khan Younis in Muwasi, at the heart of the zone that is packed with tent camps. Officials at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital said 17 people were killed.
Apparently referring to the strike, the Israeli military said in a statement that it targeted a commander in Islamic Jihad’s naval unit west of Khan Younis. It said it was looking into reports that civilians were killed.
The attack hit about a kilometer (0.6 miles) from a compound that Israel struck on Saturday, saying it was targeting Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammed Deif. That blast, in an area also surrounded by tents, killed more than 90 Palestinians, including children, according to Gaza health officials. It is still not known if Deif was killed in the strike.
The new airstrikes came as Israel and Hamas continued to weigh the latest cease-fire proposal. Hamas has said talks meant to wind down the nine-month-long war would continue, even after Israel targeted Deif. International mediators are working to push Israel and Hamas toward a deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.
Israeli forces have repeatedly had to launch new offensives to combat Hamas fighters they say have been regrouping in parts of Gaza that the military has previously invaded. Still, the military has sounded increasingly confident that it has severely damaged the militants' organization and infrastructure in its 9-month-old campaign.
The military said Tuesday that it has eliminated half of the leadership of Hamas' military wing and that some 14,000 militants have been killed or detained. It said it killed six brigade commanders, over 20 battalion commanders, and approximately 150 company commanders from Hamas' ranks, and that over the course of the war, it has hit 37,000 targets from the air within the Gaza Strip, including more than 25,000 terrorist infrastructure and launch sites.
The figures could not be independently confirmed.
Israel's ground campaigns have focused on northern Gaza and the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, where it says it has destroyed extensive Hamas tunnel networks. The offensives have left entire neighborhoods flattened. While ground operations continue in Rafah, airstrikes now appear to be hitting heavily in the areas untouched by previous offensives in the center and the coastal “safe zone.”
Strikes late Monday and on Tuesday hit the Nuseirat and Zawaida refugee camps in central Gaza. Strikes on four houses killed at least 24 people, including 10 women and four children, according to officials at Al Aqsa hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah.
Another hit a U.N. school in Nuseirat where families were sheltering, killing at least nine people. AP footage showed the school's yard covered in rubble and twisted metal from a structure that was hit. Workers carried bodies wrapped in blankets, as women and children watched from the classrooms where they have been living.
Israel's military said Hamas militants were operating from the school to plan attacks. Its claim could not be independently confirmed.
Other strikes in Khan Younis and Rafah killed 12 people, according to medical officials and AP journalists. An AP journalist counted the bodies at the hospital before a funeral was held at its gates.
The military said air force planes struck some 40 targets in Gaza over the past day, among them observation posts, Hamas military structures and explosives-rigged buildings. Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants operate in densely populated areas.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it would begin sending draft notices to Jewish ultra-Orthodox men next week — a step that could destabilize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and trigger more large protests in the community. Under long-standing political arrangements, ultra-Orthodox men had been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men — an exemption that created resentment among the general public in Israel.
The war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 38,600 people, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.
Hamas’ October attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostage. About 120 remain in captivity, with about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
Violence has also surged in the West Bank. On Tuesday a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli policeman, wounding him lightly, before another officer opened fire, killing the assailant who was identified as a 19-year-old from Gaza.
35 people die in a storm that brought heavy rainfall to eastern Afghanistan, Taliban official says
A storm that brought heavy rainfall to eastern Afghanistan killed at least 35 people on Monday, a Taliban official said.
Many others were injured across Nangarhar province, according to Sediqullah Quraishi, provincial director of the information and culture department.
Among the dead were five members of the same family who were killed when the roof of their house collapsed in Surkh Rod district, Quraishi said. Four other family members were injured.
He said there are women and children among those killed and injured, and the weather has destroyed many properties and crops in different parts of the province,
Earlier, the World Food Program said the exceptionally heavy rains in Afghanistan had killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan on May 10 and May 11. Survivors have been left with no home, no land and no source of livelihood, WFP said.
Syrians vote for next parliament, which may pave way for Assad to extend rule
Syrians were voting for members of a new parliament in an election Monday that was expected to hold few surprises but could pave the way for a constitutional amendment to extend the term of President Bashar Assad.
The vote is the fourth in Syria since mass anti-government protests in 2011 and a brutal crackdown by security forces spiraled into an ongoing civil war and comes as an economic crisis grips the country, fueling demonstrations in the south.
Israeli strike in Syria kills a former bodyguard of Lebanon's Hezbollah leader
Syria's 2024 parliamentary election excludes rebel-held northwest Syria and the country's northeast under U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The number of eligible voters hasn't been announced either, and unlike presidential elections, the millions of diaspora Syrians — whose numbers have ballooned since the civil war — are not qualified to vote for the legislators.
Western countries and Assad's critics say the polling in government-held areas in Syria is neither free nor fair.
At least 7 arrested in Germany and Sweden on suspicion of committing war crimes in Syria
This year, 1,516 government-approved candidates are running for the 250-seat People’s Assembly. Some 8,151 polling stations were set up in 15 voting districts in government-held areas, with results expected to be announced Monday night or the following day.
In the last round of elections in 2020, the outcome was delayed for days due to technical issues, according to officials. Assad’s Baath Party won 166 seats, in addition to 17 others from allied parties, while 67 seats went to independent candidates.
Paris court to decide on validity of France's arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar Assad
The poll is taking place as Syria’s economy continues to deteriorate after years of conflict, Western-led sanctions, the COVID-19 pandemic and dwindling aid due to donor fatigue.
Meanwhile, the value of the country's national currency against the dollar has reached new lows, sparking food and fuel inflation. The government has also partially rolled back its subsidy program almost a year ago while at the same time doubling public sector and pension wages.
Voters told The Associated Press that fixing Syria's hobbling economy is a key issue.
“We hope that our trust in these new legislators will bring good to the country and improve conditions,” said Ahmad al-Afoush, 40, after voting in Damascus.
Shirine al-Khleif hopes the new parliament will proactively take measures to improve the living situation in Syria.
"I don’t want to say that the predecessors weren’t good. We just want things to improve,” the 47-year-old engineer said.
In the Druze-majority southern province of Sweida, where anti-government protests have been taking place regularly for nearly a year due to economic misery, many called for a boycott of the polls. Videos posted online by Suwayda24, a local activist media collective, and others showed protesters grabbing ballot boxes off a truck in an attempt to stop them from reaching the polling stations.
Elsewhere, campaigning was low-key as candidates focused mainly on general slogans such as national unity and prosperity.
Vladimir Pran, an independent adviser on transitional political and electoral processes, said the competitive part of the Syrian election process comes before the polling starts, when a voted-on list of Baath Party candidates is sent to the party’s central command, allowing them to run in the election.
“Elections are really already finished... with the end of the primary process,” he said. Once the Baath party list is completed, “you can check the list and the results, and you will see that literally all of them will be in the Parliament.”
The number of incumbents who made the final list this year was relatively low, suggesting a reshuffling within the Baath party.
Maroun Sfeir, a consultant on transitional electoral and political processes, said the 169 candidates put forward by the Baath party alone go past the margin of 167 MPs needed to propose a constitutional amendment, protect the president from being accused of treason and veto legislation.
In addition, 16 candidates from Baath-allied parties are also running on the same list, he said. “You’re only three MPs short of three-quarters of the parliament, which is required for (passing) a constitutional amendment.”
While that leaves 65 slots open for independent candidates, Sfeir said they should not be expected to present a real opposition bloc.
“They are all pre-vetted ... to ensure that they’re all loyal or without any threat,” he said.
With Assad facing term limits that would end his presidency in 2028, the next parliament is widely expected to try to pass a constitutional amendment to extend his term.
Regional countries strongly condemn Israel's targeting of displaced Palestinians in Gaza
Iraq, Jordan and Iran on Saturday condemned the targeting of displaced civilians in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli airstrike killed 90 Palestinians, half of them women and children, in displacement shelters in Khan Younis, south of Gaza.
Iraqi government spokesman Basim al-Awadi said in a statement that after nine months of war on Gaza, "the massacres of the brutal aggression continue, with the latest atrocities claiming the lives of dozens of innocent children and women."
"We renew our call for the international community and major powers to assume their responsibility regarding the continued blatant aggression of this entity (Israel), which considers itself above international law and justice," the statement said.
Israeli attack on southern Gaza kills 71 people, said to target head of Hamas' military wing
Al-Awadi also said that there is a need for immediate action to save Palestinian people from "starvation, systematic killing, and attempts to force them out of their lands," as well as to deliver necessary aid, medical supplies, and food to meet their humanitarian needs.
At least 90 Palestinians were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit tents for displaced people in the Mawasi area in Khan Younis on Saturday morning, the Gaza-based health authorities updated late in the day.
Jordan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs slammed the morning raid as another "systematic targeting of civilians and refugee shelters."
The ministry spokesperson Sufian Qudah affirmed the kingdom's absolute denunciation of Israel's ongoing violations of international law and international humanitarian law, as well as its defiance of the broad international calls for an end to the war.
Also condemning Israel's brutal move against displaced civilians in Gaza, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani urged the international community to "take decisive and effective action and do its utmost to completely stop Israel's criminal moves against the defenseless Palestinians in Gaza in a lasting manner."
According to local health authorities, about 300 others in Gaza were also wounded in the morning raid, including dozens of children and women, with some sustaining critical injuries.
Earlier in the day, Israeli state-owned Kan TV news said the target of this Israeli attack was Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, noting that the army was awaiting the results of the raid.
Israeli strike kills 4 aid workers in Gaza 'safe zone’
Hamas has rejected the claim, saying it came in the context of covering up Israel's crimes.
Deif, 58, has been considered one of Israel's most wanted men for many years and was previously injured during several assassination attempts against him.
Israeli strike targets the Hamas military commander and kills at least 90 in southern Gaza
Israel said it targeted Hamas’ shadowy military commander in a massive strike Saturday in the crowded southern Gaza Strip that killed at least 90 people including children, according to local health officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “there still isn’t absolute certainty” that Mohammed Deif and a second Hamas commander, Rafa Salama, were killed.
Hamas rejected the claim that Deif was in the area, saying “these false claims are merely a cover-up for the scale of the horrific massacre.” The strike took place in an area Israel's military had designated as safe for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Deif and Hamas’ top official in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, are believed by Israel to be the chief architects of the Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and triggered the Israel-Hamas war. Not seen in public for years, Deif has long topped Israel’s most-wanted list and is believed to have escaped multiple Israeli assassination attempts. On Oct. 7, Hamas issued a rare voice recording of Deif announcing the “Al Aqsa Flood” operation.
The strike came at a delicate time in cease-fire efforts. Deif's death would hand Israel a major victory and Hamas a painful psychological blow. It also could give Netanyahu a possible opening. Again on Saturday, the prime minister said Israel will not end the war until Hamas’ military capabilities are destroyed. Deif’s death would be a significant step in that direction.
All Hamas leaders are marked for death and "we will reach them all,” Netanyahu said. He added that no hostages had been nearby when the strike occurred, without explaining how he knew that.
Israeli strike kills 4 aid workers in Gaza 'safe zone’
Deif's killing could also encourage Hamas to harden its positions in talks. He has been in hiding for more than two decades and is believed to be paralyzed. One of the only known images of him is a 30-year-old ID photo released by Israel. Even in Gaza, only a handful of people would recognize him.
Saturday's attack was one of the war's deadliest. The Gaza Health Ministry reported 90 dead and at least 300 others injured. Associated Press journalists counted over 40 bodies at overwhelmed Nasser Hospital nearby. Witnesses described an attack that included several strikes.
“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them," the Health Ministry said.
The Israeli military asserted that “additional terrorists hid among civilians" and described the location as surrounded by trees and several buildings. An Israeli official said the strike hit a fenced area of Khan Younis that was run by Hamas, saying it was not a tent complex but an operational compound. The official described the strike as precise. The army said the compound belonged to Salama.
Witnesses said the strike landed in Muwasi, the Israeli-designated safe zone that stretches from northern Rafah to Khan Younis. Palestinians have fled to the coastal strip, sheltering mostly in tents with few basic services or supplies. More than 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes.
Footage of the aftermath showed a huge crater, charred tents and burnt-out cars. Victims were carried on the hoods and in the hatchbacks of cars, on donkey carts and on carpets.
At the hospital, a baby in a pink shirt, her face covered with sand, cried while receiving first aid. A small boy lay motionless at the other end of the bed, one shoe gone. Many wounded were treated on the floor.
There was “the overwhelming stench of blood,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson with the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees who visited the hospital and spoke with several patients. Staff said there were no cleaning products left.
The blast threw a 2-year-old child into the air and the mother was missing, Wateridge said. Another boy had his feet blown off, while an 8-year-old boy was killed. “They told me to go there to be safe,” his grieving mother told her of the area struck.
Neighboring Egypt, a mediator in cease-fire talks, condemned the strike. “These ongoing violations against Palestinian citizens add serious complications to the ability of the efforts currently being made to reach calm and a cease-fire,” its Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It also criticized the “shameful silence and lack of action from the international community.”
Egyptian, Qatari and U.S. mediators have been pushing to narrow gaps between Israel and Hamas over a proposed deal for a three-phase cease-fire and hostage release plan in Gaza.
Heavy Israeli bombardment in Gaza City forces medical facilities to close as thousands flee
The U.S.-backed proposal calls for an initial cease-fire with a limited hostage release and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza's populated areas. At the same time, the two sides will negotiate terms of the second phase, which is supposed to bring a full hostage release in return for a permanent cease-fire and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Netanyahu said he wasn't moving from the U.S.-backed proposal but listed conditions: Israel's right to continue the war until its goals are achieved, the return of as many hostages as possible in the deal's first stage, no return of Hamas fighters to northern Gaza and the prevention of arms smuggling, including control of the key Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel and abducted about 250 people.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,400 people in Gaza and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Israeli strike kills 4 aid workers in Gaza 'safe zone’
A United Kingdom-based aid group said one of its senior employees in Gaza was killed Friday in an Israeli strike that hit its warehouse located in an Israeli-declared humanitarian safe zone. The strike also killed three staffers from other aid groups using the warehouse, the Al-Khair Foundation said in a statement.
The Israeli military said Husam Mansour, the Al-Khair Foundation member who was killed, was in fact a senior Hamas militant. Israel said he used his position with the humanitarian group to raise money for Hamas.
Israeli army acknowledges Oct. 7 failures, including slow response and disorganization
After a two-week Israeli offensive in northern Gaza, dozens of bodies were collected throughout Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood and brought to Al-Ahli Hospital on Friday morning. Civil defense workers said they were still recovering dead and wounded from destroyed streets and buildings.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
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Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into squalid tent camps in central and southern Gaza. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine. The top United Nations court has ordered Israel to take steps to protect Palestinians as it examines genocide allegations against Israeli leaders. Israel denies the charge.
Airstrike kills 25 in southern Gaza as Israeli assault on Gaza City shuts down medical facilities
Israeli army acknowledges Oct. 7 failures, including slow response and disorganization
The Israeli military on Thursday acknowledged a string of errors in its response to the deadly Hamas attacks last Oct. 7, including slow response times and disorganization, as it released the results of its first investigation into failures during the assault that triggered the war in Gaza.
The report focused on the border community of Be’eri, where over 100 people were killed and more than 30 others taken hostage by Hamas. It was among the hardest-hit communities in the early morning attack, and it was the scene of one of the highest-profile confrontations of Oct. 7 – a standoff in which militants held a group of hostages inside a home.
“The army failed in its mission to protect the residents of Kibbutz Be'eri,” the military's chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said in a televised address. “It is painful and difficult for me to say that.”
During the standoff, a tank fired at the home, raising concerns that the 13 hostages inside were killed by friendly fire. The military concluded that they were likely killed by Hamas militants, not Israeli shelling, though it was unclear how it reached that conclusion, and the report called for additional tests. The army said the kibbutz was overrun by about 340 Hamas fighters.
Investigators “determined that, based on the information reviewed and to the best of their understanding, no civilians inside the building were harmed by tank shell fire," the report said, though it said two Israeli civilians were hit by shrapnel outside the building. One of those civilians died, according to the man’s wife.
It also said commanders on the scene made “professional and responsible decisions” in ordering the tank strike. It said there had been a joint decision by various commanders after hearing gunshots within the house and militants saying they planned to kill the hostages and commit suicide.
“The team determined that most of the hostages were likely murdered by the terrorists,” the report said.
The report also pointed to delays of several hours in the arrival of military forces and said forces waited outside the kibbutz into the afternoon as residents were being killed, not understanding the severity of the situation.
“This situation is extremely grave and cannot occur,” it said.
The report praised “the bravery of the Be’eri residents and the members of the kibbutz’s civilian rapid response team," saying it was "crucial in stabilizing the defensive line during the first hours of combat.”
The Israeli army has come under heavy criticism from Palestinians and human rights groups, who say its investigations rarely result in punishment.
Kibbutz residents gave the report a mixed reception, expressing anger over the army’s failures that day but also appreciation that it took responsibility.
Meir Zarbiv, a resident whose brother and sister were both killed on Oct. 7, called the report a “deception” by the army. “I don’t believe the report, and I don’t believe anything about it,” he said.
He said he still cannot understand the delays in arriving and entering the kibbutz. “I just don’t believe what happened here. I have no explanation,” he said. “Where was the army?”
In a statement, the community called the investigation “thorough” and said it helped them understand the complexity of the fighting that day.
“We see great importance in the army accepting the blame and responsibility for its complete failure to protect us and in asking for forgiveness for abandoning us for many hours during an attack of unmatched evil,” it said.
The kibbutz also called for an official state commission of inquiry into the broader failures of Oct. 7 “so the unimaginable loss we experienced will never against be experienced by any other citizen.”
The surprise cross-border raid killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 250 others hostage, in the deadliest attack in Israel’s 76-year history. The attack, in which several thousand militants stormed across the border without resistance, revealed grave shortcomings in the army’s readiness, its intelligence assessments and policies set by political leaders toward Gaza.
An Israeli offensive launched in response to the attack has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, displaced over 80% of the territory’s people and triggered a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Israel is now facing war crimes and genocide allegations in international courts.
The army has launched multiple investigations into the failures of Oct. 7, and the head of military intelligence has resigned. Several other commanders have apologized and taken responsibility for their failures.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected repeated calls for an official state investigation, even as the war enters its 10th month.
Netanyahu has said an investigation cannot be conducted while the country is focused on its war against Hamas and says all questions will be answered at the appropriate time. But critics accuse the Israeli leader of dragging his feet to avoid what will almost certainly be harsh criticism of his policies and leadership.
At a military ceremony Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the time has come to launch a state commission of inquiry to look into the country's leadership. “It needs to check me, the minister of defense. It needs to check the prime minister.”
In the face of fierce international criticism, Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and the roughly 120 hostages remaining in Gaza return home. Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in weekly protests calling on Netanyahu to reach an immediate cease-fire, saying time is running out to bring the hostages home safely.
International mediators have launched renewed efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu announced Thursday that he would send a team of negotiators to Cairo to continue cease-fire talks, but he reiterated his stance that he will not halt the war until Israel achieves its war objectives.
He was interrupted by hecklers at the same military ceremony when he vowed to continue the war “until victory, even if it takes time.”
As he spoke, a small crowd began to chant “shame.”
'We have nothing': Palestinians return to utter destruction in Gaza City after Israeli withdrawal
Palestinians returned to breathtaking scenes of destruction in the Gaza City district of Shijaiyah after Israeli troops withdrew, ending a two-week offensive there. Civil defense workers said Thursday that so far, they had found the bodies of 60 people in the rubble.
Families who fled the assault ventured back into Shijaiyah to see the condition of their homes or salvage whatever they could.
Nearly every building was flattened to rubble for block after block, leaving giant piles of concrete and twisted rebar. Here and there, grey gutted concrete frames still stood a few stories high. The ever-present buzzing sound of Israeli military drones hung in the hot summer air as people on bicycles or horse-drawn carts made their way over dirt paths where the streets had apparently been bulldozed away.
Sharif Abu Shanab found his family's four-story building collapsed. “I can’t enter it. I can’t take anything out of it, not even a can of tuna. We have nothing, no food or drink,” he said.
Since fleeing the district, his family sleeps in the streets, he said. “Where do we go and to whom? … We have no home or anything,” he said in despair. “There’s only one solution, hit us with a nuclear bomb and relieve us of this life.”
The Israeli military has invaded Shijaiyah several times in the nine-month war against Hamas militants in Gaza. Its latest assault began in late June, when it said it was pursuing militants who had regrouped in the district. The assault sent some 80,000 people fleeing Shijaiyah, most into nearby areas, and it is not known how many people remained in the district during the fighting.
The Israeli military said in a statement Wednesday evening that its operations in Shijaiyah had ended. It said its troops had killed dozens of militants and destroyed eight tunnels in the area. Those claims could not be independently confirmed.
Gaza’s Civil Defense organization said that during Israel’s offensive, its emergency crews had largely been unable to respond to calls for help from residents in destroyed buildings. After the Israeli pullout, its crews entered and recovered 60 bodies, it said, adding that the search was ongoing. More bodies were believed buried under rubble, but the organization has little heavy equipment to clear debris.
The United Nations estimated earlier this week that about 300,000 Palestinians were still in northern Gaza, after much of the population left earlier in the war. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are now experiencing widespread hunger while crammed into squalid tent camps.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
The top United Nations court has ordered Israel to take steps to protect Palestinians as it examines genocide allegations against Israeli leaders. Israel denies the charge.