GAZA: Palestinian armed groups staged military exercises in Gaza on Tuesday, including firing rockets into the sea, to mark the anniversary of the start of the 2008 conflict with Israel.
The demonstrations were scheduled to last several hours and involve about 10 groups in the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian enclave, said a spokesman for the Al-Quds Brigade forces, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad.
The goal of the exercise, the first of its kind, is to “strengthen the skills of combatants” and demonstrate the “unity” of armed groups in Gaza, added the spokesman, whose face was almost entirely covered by a traditional headscarf.
Hamas, the Islamist group that has controlled Gaza since 2007, was also taking part. Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV showed rockets being fired from the strip on Tuesday into the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel’s army said a projectile device was launched from Gaza overnight Monday to Tuesday, but that it did not cross into Israeli territory.
Israel did not immediatly retaliate to that launch with airstrikes, as it typically does when rockets fired from Gaza enter Israel.
The drills also come days after Hamas accused Israel of launching strikes that damaged a children’s hospital.
Israel, which said it carried out the weekend airstrikes in response to rocket fire from Gaza, denied that its missiles hit the hospital.
In December 2008, Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead” to stop Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.
It ended with a cease-fire in January 2009, after 1,440 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
Hamas and Israel fought two further conflicts, in 2012 and 2014.
A fragile truce has broadly held in recent months, despite rocket fire from Gaza which is generally followed by retaliatory Israeli air strikes.
Poverty rates in Gaza, which hovered around 50 percent before the coronavirus pandemic, are thought to have increased since Hamas imposed lockdown measures to limit transmission.
Gaza forces fire rockets to mark Israel conflict anniversary
https://arab.news/nhxzb
Gaza forces fire rockets to mark Israel conflict anniversary
- The demonstrations were scheduled to last several hours and involve about 10 groups in the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian enclave
- The goal of the exercise is to “strengthen the skills of combatants” and demonstrate the “unity” of armed groups in Gaza
Two Tunisia columnists handed over three years in prison
- Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies have already been in detention for almost two years
- They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering
TUNIS: Two prominent Tunisian columnists were sentenced on Thursday to three and a half years in prison each for money laundering and tax evasion, according to a relative and local media.
The two men, Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies, have already been in detention for almost two years for statements considered critical of President Kais Saied’s government, made on radio, television programs and social media.
They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.
“Three and a half years for Mourad and Borhen,” Zeghidi’s sister, Meriem Zeghidi Adda, wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
Since Saied’s power grab, which granted him sweeping powers on July 25, 2021, local and international NGOs have denounced a regression of rights and freedoms in Tunisia.
Dozens of opposition figures and civil society activists are being prosecuted under a presidential decree officially aimed at combatting “fake news” but subject to a very broad interpretation denounced by human rights defenders.
Others, including opposition leaders, have been sentenced to heavy prison terms in a mega-trial of “conspiracy against state security.”
In 2025, Tunisia fell 11 places in media watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, dropping from 118th to 129th out of 180 countries.
