GAZA: Dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles surrounded the Nasser Hospital in Gaza Tuesday, where thousands of displaced people have sought refuge from the fighting, witnesses said.
Witnesses told AFP that shots were being fired at the sprawling complex in the southern city of Khan Yunis, but no raid was as yet taking place.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said Israeli troops were shooting and firing “shells and (conducting) violent raids in its surroundings in preparation for its storming.”
“Thousands of displaced people are still inside the hospital,” the ministry said. “They do not have sufficient quantities of drinking water, food and infant formula, and their lives are in danger.”
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
For the past nine days, Israeli troops have been involved in heavy fighting in and around Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the territory’s biggest. They claim to have killed 170 Palestinian militants there and arrested hundreds of others.
Israel tanks surround Gaza’s Nasser Hospital: witnesses
https://arab.news/brvna
Israel tanks surround Gaza’s Nasser Hospital: witnesses
- Shots fired but no raid was yet taking place
Western Libya forces kill notorious migrant smuggler, security agency says
- The Security Threats Combating Agency raided the group’s hideout in response to the attack and killed its leader, Ahmed Al-Dabbashi
- Dabbashi had been under US sanctions since 2018
BENGHAZI: Western Libyan security forces said on Friday they had killed a notorious migrant smuggler in the coastal city of Sabratha after “criminal gangs” affiliated with him attacked one of their checkpoints overnight.
The Security Threats Combating Agency, a security agency under western Libya’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah, said they raided the group’s hideout in response to the attack and killed its leader, Ahmed Al-Dabbashi, also known as “Al-Amu.”
Dabbashi’s brother was arrested and six members of the force were wounded in the fighting, the agency said in the statement on its Facebook page.
Dabbashi had been under US sanctions since 2018. Washington described him as the “leader of one of two powerful migrant smuggling organizations” based in Sabratha and said he had “used his organization to rob and enslave migrants before allowing them to leave for Italy.”
Human trafficking is rife in Libya, which has been divided between rival armed factions since a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
The proliferation of smuggling gangs and the absence of a strong central authority have made the country one of the main staging points for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.
Dbeibah was installed through a UN-backed process in 2021, but significant parts of western Libya remain outside his control. Dbeibah’s Government of National Unity, or GNU, is not recognized by rival authorities in the east.
An armed alliance affiliated with an earlier UN-backed government in Tripoli – the Government of National Accord – had taken on Dabbashi’s forces in a three-week battle in 2017 that killed and wounded dozens and damaged residential areas and Sabratha’s Roman ruins.
