GAZA: Diplomatic efforts gathered pace Thursday for a ceasefire on the 11th day of deadly violence between Israel and armed Palestinian groups in Gaza as air strikes again hammered the enclave.
A column of grey smoke billowed above Gaza after a night in which families cowered in fear from the bombing while, the Israeli army said, some 70 rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel, sending residents fleeing into bomb shelters.
Talks continued to end the bloodshed after US President Joe Biden urged a "significant de-escalation" while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push on until the military campaign reaches its objective, "to restore quiet and security" for Israelis.
UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland was visiting Qatar for talks with Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Islamist group Hamas which rules the enclave, as part of an effort to "restore calm," according to a diplomatic source.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said "indirect talks" with Hamas were essential to advancing efforts toward an end of hostilities. "Of course Hamas has to be included because without Hamas there will be no ceasefire," she said.
Her foreign minister, Heiko Maas, speaking earlier near Tel Aviv, expressed Germany's "solidarity" with Israel but also called for an end to the fighting.
"Israel has the right to defend itself against this massive and unacceptable attack," Maas said of the rockets Hamas first fired on May 10 following violent clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
"The number of victims is rising every day and this greatly concerns us, which is why we support the international efforts for a ceasefire and are convinced that the violence needs to end soon in the interest of the people."
Maas was also due to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank but had no plans to meet with Hamas, which the European Union considers a terrorist organisation.
A senior Hamas official told AFP: "We expect a return to calm in the coming hours, or tomorrow (Friday), but it depends on the cessation of the aggression of the occupation forces in Gaza and Jerusalem.
"But there is nothing definitive for the moment," added the source, indicating that Qatar, an emirate financing aid to Gaza and where Haniyeh lives, was at the heart of "intense" negotiations.
The Israeli army said Hamas and other Islamist armed groups in Gaza have fired 4,070 rockets towards Israel, with the overwhelming majority of those that were bound for populated areas intercepted by its Iron Dome air defences.
The rockets have claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child, with one Indian and two Thai nationals among those killed, the police say.
Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed 230 Palestinians, including 65 children, according to the Gaza health ministry, leaving vast areas in rubble and displacing some 120,000 people, according to the Hamas government.
Overnight, Israel continued to pound Gaza with air strikes and artillery fire aimed at destroying Hamas tunnels and other infrastructure, the military said.
One Israeli strike on Gaza on Wednesday killed a disabled man, his pregnant wife and their three-year-old child, the enclave's health ministry said.
"What did my brother do?" the man's bereaved brother Omar Saleha, 31, told AFP. "He was just sitting in his wheelchair."
Israel says it takes all steps to avoid civilian casualties, including by phoning residents to warn them of imminent strikes, and blames Hamas for placing weapons and military sites in densely populated areas.
The United States, a key Israel ally, has repeatedly blocked adoption of a joint UN Security Council statement calling for a halt to hostilities, including one proposed by France, saying it could undermine efforts to de-escalate the crisis.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken however again stressed on Twitter that Washington "expects to see de-escalation on the path to a ceasefire".
An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday Israel was assessing at what stage it may stop its military campaign.
The UN General Assembly, where no member has veto power, was set to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian issue Thursday.
Israel's bombing campaign has left the two million people of Gaza, which has been under Israeli blockade for 14 years, desperate for relief.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that people in both Gaza and Israel "urgently need respite from non-stop hostilities".
The World Health Organization on Thursday issued an urgent appeal for $7 million it said are needed to "enable a comprehensive emergency response in the next six months" following the escalation of violence.
The military conflict has sharply heightened tensions and sparked violence between Jews and Arab-Israelis, while Palestinian protesters in the West Bank and east Jerusalem have repeatedly clashed with security forces.
In the West Bank, the army has killed 25 Palestinians since the outbreak of hostilities. The worst death toll in years in the occupied Palestinian territory includes several Palestinians who the Israeli army said had attempted to ram or stab Israeli forces at checkpoints.
Diplomatic push for Gaza truce as Israel, Hamas trade heavy fire
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Diplomatic push for Gaza truce as Israel, Hamas trade heavy fire
- Wennesland is visiting Qatar for talks with Ismail Haniyeh as part of an effort to "restore calm"
- Angela Merkel said "indirect talks" with Hamas were essential to advancing efforts toward an end of hostilities
Israel pounds Gaza as truce talks resume in Cairo
- AlQahera News: ‘Truce negotiations have resumed in Cairo today with all sides present’
- Moscow so far sees no prospect for a peace settlement in Gaza or the wider Middle East
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Israel bombarded the overcrowded Gaza city of Rafah, where it has launched a ground incursion, as talks resumed Wednesday in Cairo aimed at agreeing the terms of a truce in the seven-month war.
Despite international objections, Israel sent tanks into Rafah on Tuesday and seized the nearby crossing into Egypt that is the main conduit for aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries, with a senior US official later revealing Washington had paused a shipment of bombs last week after Israel failed to address US concerns over its Rafah plans.
The Israeli military said hours later it was reopening another major aid crossing into Gaza, Kerem Shalom, as well as the Erez crossing.
But the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the Kerem Shalom crossing — which Israel shut after a rocket attack killed four soldiers on Sunday — remained closed.
It came after a night of heavy Israeli strikes and shelling across Gaza. AFPTV footage showed Palestinians scrambling in the dark to pull survivors, bloodied and caked in dust, out from under the rubble of a Rafah building.
Russia said on Wednesday that the war in Gaza was escalating due to Israel’s incursion into Rafah and that Moscow so far saw no prospect for a peace settlement in Gaza or the wider Middle East.
“An additional destabilizing factor, including for the entire region, was the launch of an Israeli military ground operation in Rafah,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“About one and a half million Palestinian civilians are concentrated there. In this regard, we demand strict compliance with the provisions of international humanitarian law.”
Speaking more broadly about efforts to find a lasting settlement in the Middle East, Zakharova said: “I would like to call it a settlement, but, alas, it is far from a settlement.”
“There are no prospects for resolving the situation in the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, the situation in the conflict zone is escalating daily.”
“We are living in Rafah in extreme fear and endless anxiety as the occupation army keeps firing artillery shells indiscriminately,” said Muhanad Ahmad Qishta, 29.
“Rafah is a witnessing a very large displacement, as places the Israeli army claims to be safe are also being bombed,” he said.
The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel in response vowed to crush Hamas and launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Militants also took around 250 people hostage, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 36 who are believed to be dead.
Talks aimed at agreeing a ceasefire resumed in Cairo on Wednesday “in the presence of all parties,” Egyptian media reported.
A senior Hamas official said the latest round of negotiations would be “decisive.”
“The resistance insists on the rightful demands of its people and will not give up any of our people’s rights,” he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the negotiations.
The official had previously warned it would be Israel’s “last chance” to free the scores of hostages still in militants’ hands.
Mediators have failed to broker a new truce since a week-long ceasefire in November saw 105 hostages freed, the Israelis among them in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Mediator Qatar urges international community to prevent Rafah ‘genocide’
- Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt
- African Union condemns the Israeli military’s moves into southern Gaza’s Rafah
DOHA: Qatar called on the international community on Wednesday to prevent a “genocide” in Rafah following Israel’s seizure of the Gaza city’s crossing with Egypt and threats of a wider assault.
In a statement the Gulf state, which has been mediating between Israel and militant group Hamas, appealed “for urgent international action to prevent the city from being invaded and a crime of genocide being committed.”
Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt. Israel has vowed for weeks to launch a ground incursion into Rafah, despite a clamour of international objection.
The attacks on the southern city, which is packed with displaced civilians, came as negotiators and mediators met in Cairo to try to hammer out a hostage-release and truce deal in the seven-month war.
Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political office in Doha since 2012, has been engaged — along with Egypt and the United States — in months of behind-the-scenes mediation between Israel and the Palestinian group.
The African Union condemned Wednesday the Israeli military’s moves into southern Gaza’s Rafah, calling for the international community to stop “this deadly escalation” of the war.
AU Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat “firmly condemns the extension of this war to the Rafah crossing,” said a statement after Israeli tanks captured the key corridor for humanitarian aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
Faki “expresses his extreme concern at the war undertaken by Israel in Gaza which results, at every moment, in massive deaths and systematic destruction of the conditions of human life,” the statement said.
“He calls on the entire international community to effectively coordinate collective action to stop this deadly escalation.”
Israel says it has reopened Kerem Shalom border crossing for Gaza aid
- Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza is also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory
JERUSALEM: Israel said it reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing to humanitarian aid for Gaza Wednesday, four days after closing it in response to a rocket attack that killed four soldiers.
“Trucks from Egypt carrying humanitarian aid, including food, water, shelter equipment, medicine and medical equipment donated by the international community are already arriving at the crossing,” the army said in a joint statement with COGAT, the defense ministry body that oversees Palestinian civil affairs.
The supplies will be transferred to the Gaza side of the crossing after undergoing inspection, it added.
The statement said the Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza is also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory.
The Kerem Shalom crossing was closed after a Hamas rocket attack killed four soldiers and wounded more than a dozen on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Israeli troops seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt after launching an incursion into the eastern sector of the city.
The United Nations and Israel’s staunchest ally the United States both condemned the closure of the two crossings which are a lifeline for civilians facing looming famine.
‘A blessing’: Rains refill Iraq’s drought-hit reservoirs
- The last time Darbandikhan was full was in 2019
- Iraq is considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change
Darbandikhan: The reservoir behind the massive Darbandikhan dam, tucked between the rolling mountains of northeastern Iraq, is almost full again after four successive years of drought and severe water shortages.
Iraqi officials say recent rainfall has refilled some of the water-scarce country’s main reservoirs, taking levels to a record since 2019.
“The dam’s storage capacity is three million cubic meters (106 million cubic feet). Today, with the available reserves, the dam is only missing 25 centimeters (10 inches) of water to be considered full,” Saman Ismail, director of the Darbandikhan facility, told AFP on Sunday.
Built on the River Sirwan, the dam is located south of the city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
“In the coming days, we will be able to say that it’s full,” said Ismail, with the water just a few meters below the road running along the edge of the basin.
The last time Darbandikhan was full was in 2019, and since then “we’ve only had years of drought and shortages,” said Ismail.
He cited “climate change in the region” as a reason, “but also dam construction beyond Kurdistan’s borders.”
The central government in Baghdad says upstream dams built in neighboring Iran and Turkiye have heavily reduced water flow in Iraq’s rivers, on top of rising temperatures and irregular rainfall.
This winter, however, bountiful rains have helped to ease shortages in Iraq, considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change.
In Iraq, rich in oil but where infrastructure is often run-down, torrential rains have also flooded the streets of Kurdistan’s regional capital Irbil.
Four hikers died last week in floods in Kurdistan, and in Diyala, a rural province in central Iraq, houses were destroyed.
Ali Radi Thamer, director of the dam authority at Iraq’s water resources ministry, said that most of the country’s six biggest dams have experienced a rise in water levels.
At the Mosul dam, the largest reservoir with a capacity of about 11 billion cubic meters, “the storage level is very good, we have benefitted from the rains and the floods,” said Thamer.
Last summer, he added, Iraq’s “water reserves... reached a historic low.”
“The reserves available today will have positive effects for all sectors,” Thamer said, including agriculture and treatment plants that produce potable water, as well as watering southern Iraq’s fabled marshes that have dried up in recent years.
He cautioned that while 2019 saw “a sharp increase in water reserves,” it was followed by “four successive dry seasons.”
Water has been a major issue in Iraq, a country of 43 million people that faces a serious environmental crisis from worsening climate change, with temperatures frequently hitting 50 degrees Celsius in summer.
“Sure, today we have rain and floods, water reserves that have relatively improved, but this does not mean the end of drought,” Thamer said.
About five kilometers (three miles) south of Darbandikhan, terraces near a small riverside tourist establishment are submerged in water.
But owner Aland Salah prefers to see the glass half full.
“The water of the Sirwan river is a blessing,” he told AFP.
“When the flow increases, the area grows in beauty.
“We have some damage, but we will keep working.”
Israel launches fresh Gaza strikes as negotiators work toward truce
- The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries
- One strike on an apartment in devastated Gaza City killed seven members of the same family and wounded several other people
RAFAH: Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt, where negotiators were working to make good on their “last chance” to cement a ceasefire deal.
After weeks of vowing to launch a ground incursion into the border city of Rafah despite international objections, Israeli tanks moved in Tuesday, capturing the crossing that has served as the main conduit for aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries, with a senior US official later revealing Washington had paused a shipment of bombs last week after Israel failed to address US concerns over its Rafah plans.
The push into the southern city, which is packed with displaced civilians, came as negotiators and mediators met in Cairo to try and hammer out a hostage release deal and truce in the seven-month war between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
A senior Hamas official, requesting anonymity, warned this would be Israel’s “last chance” to free the scores of hostages still in militants’ hands.
Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported Tuesday that mediators from Qatar, the United States and Egypt were meeting with a Hamas delegation.
It later reported that “all parties” including Israel had agreed to resume talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that his country’s delegation was already in Cairo.
Israel’s close ally and chief military backer the United States said it was hopeful the two sides could “close the remaining gaps.”
“Everybody’s coming to the table,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “That’s not insignificant.”
Rafah bombing
Despite the Cairo talks, witnesses and a local hospital reported Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight into Wednesday morning, including around Rafah.
One strike on an apartment in devastated Gaza City killed seven members of the same family and wounded several other people early Wednesday, the Al-Ahli hospital said.
Israel’s Rafah operation began hours after Hamas announced late Monday it had accepted a truce proposal — one Israel said was “far” from what it had previously agreed to.
Still, the announcement prompted cheering crowds to take to the streets in Gaza, though Rafah resident Abu Aoun Al-Najjar said the “indescribable joy” was short-lived.
“It turned out to be a bloody night,” he told AFP, as more Israeli bombardments “stole our joy.”
Taking control of Rafah crossing
Israeli army footage showed tanks taking “operational control” of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.
Netanyahu described the operation as “a very important step” in denying Hamas “a passage that was essential for establishing its reign of terror.”
But UN humanitarian office spokesman Jens Laerke said Israel had also denied his organization access to both Rafah and Kerem Shalom — another major aid crossing on the border with Israel.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel to “immediately” reopen both crossings, calling the closures “especially damaging to an already dire humanitarian situation.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered a similar view, calling the closures “unacceptable.”
She said the Kerem Shalom crossing was expected to reopen on Wednesday.
Hours later, a senior Biden administration official speaking on condition of anonymity revealed the United States had “paused one shipment of weapons last week” after Israel failed to address its concerns over the Rafah incursion, which Washington has vocally opposed.
The shipment had consisted of more than 3,500 heavy-duty bombs, the official said.
It was the first time that Biden had acted on a warning he gave Netanyahu in April — namely that US policy on Gaza would depend on how Israel treated civilians.
The US official said Washington was “especially focused” on the use of the heaviest 2,000-pound (907 kilogram) bombs “and the impact they could have in dense urban settings.”
However, the official added: “We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment.”
The Pentagon, meanwhile, said the US military had completed construction of an aid pier off Gaza’s coast, but weather conditions mean it is currently unsafe to move the two-part facility into place.
The US Central Command announced its leader, General Michael Erik Kurilla, had been in Egypt on Monday and Tuesday to “gain a deeper understanding of the perspectives of Egyptian military leaders on regional security and the status of humanitarian aid.”
Rising death toll
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a retaliatory offensive that has so far killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said Tuesday.
Militants also took around 250 people hostage on October 7, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 36 who are believed to be dead.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel might “deepen” its Gaza operation if negotiations failed to bring the hostages home.
“This operation will continue until we eliminate Hamas in the Rafah area and the entire Gaza Strip, or until the first hostage returns,” he said in a statement.
Egypt and Qatar have taken the lead in the truce talks, with Hamas saying Monday it had told officials from both countries of its “approval of their proposal regarding a ceasefire.”
Hamas member Khalil Al-Hayya told the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel that the proposal involved a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the return of Palestinians displaced by the war and a hostage-prisoner exchange, with the goal of a “permanent ceasefire.”
Netanyahu’s office called the proposal “far from Israel’s essential demands,” but said the government would still send negotiators to Cairo.
International alarm has been building about the consequences of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah, where the United Nations says 1.4 million people are sheltering.
But Netanyahu had repeatedly vowed to send in ground troops regardless of any truce, saying Israel needs to root out remaining Hamas forces.
Aid groups have warned that the coastal “humanitarian area” of Al-Muwasi — where Israel’s military told people to go before it launched its Rafah operation — is unprepared to handle the influx.
