Israel strikes on Rafah kill 22, mostly children, as US advances aid package

Palestinian children sit next to the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on April 21, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Updated 22 April 2024
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Israel strikes on Rafah kill 22, mostly children, as US advances aid package

  • Latest bombardments came as US House of Representatives approved $13 billion in new Israeli military aid
  • Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where over half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge

RAFAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said Sunday, as violence flared in the occupied West Bank.

The latest bombardments came as the US House of Representatives approved $13 billion in new Israeli military aid even as global criticism mounts over the death toll and dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

However, fears of wider war breaking out in the Middle East have eased somewhat after Iran downplayed Israel’s reported retaliation over its unprecedented missile and drone attack on the country a week ago.

Attention has turned back toward the war in Gaza, which Israel hit with several strikes overnight, according to the Palestinian territory’s Civil Defense agency.

Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive against the Hamas militant group to the city on the border with Egypt despite calls for restraint, including from the US.

“In the coming days, we will increase the political and military pressure on Hamas because this is the only way to bring back our hostages and achieve victory. We will land more and painful blows on Hamas — soon,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. He didn’t give details.




Smoke rises following Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 21, 2024. (REUTERS)

The first Israeli strike in Rafah killed a man, his wife and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. The woman was pregnant and the doctors saved the baby, the hospital said. The second strike killed 17 children and two women from an extended family.

Resident Umm Hassan Kloub, 35, said her children screamed when they “woke up to a nightmare of an explosion.”

“Every second we live in terror, even the sound of Israeli aircraft doesn’t stop,” she said.

“We don’t know whether we will live or die. This is not life.”

“These children were sleeping. What did they do? What was their fault?” asked one relative, Umm Kareem. Mohammed Al-Beheiri said that his daughter, Rasha, and her six children, the youngest 18 months old, were among those killed. A woman and three children were still under the rubble.

The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, at least two-thirds of them children and women. It has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities and left a swath of destruction. Around 80 percent of the territory’s population have fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.

The $26 billion aid package approved by the US House of Representatives on Saturday includes around $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, which experts say is on the brink of famine. The US Senate could pass the package as soon as Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest pitting Israel and the US against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East. Israel and Iran traded fire directly this month, raising fears of all-out war.

Tensions have also spiked in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli troops killed two Palestinians who the military says attacked a checkpoint with a knife and a gun near the southern West Bank town of Hebron early Sunday. The Palestinian Health Ministry said that the two killed were 18 and 19, from the same family. No Israeli forces were wounded, the army said.

Later, the military said its forces shot dead a 43-year-old Palestinian woman after she tried to stab a soldier in the northern West Bank near Beka’ot settlement.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said that it had recovered 14 bodies from an Israeli raid in the Nur Shams urban refugee camp in the West Bank that began late Thursday. Those killed include three militants from the Islamic Jihad group and a 15-year-old boy.

The military said it killed 14 militants and arrested eight suspects. Ten Israeli soldiers and one border police officer were wounded.

In a separate incident in the West Bank, an Israeli man was wounded in an explosion on Sunday, the Magen David Adom rescue service said. A video circulating online shows a man approaching a Palestinian flag planted in a field. When he kicks it, it appears to trigger an explosive device.

Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants fight in dense, residential neighborhoods. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children. The military says it has killed more than 13,000 Hamas fighters, without providing evidence.

US military aid

Much of the new military assistance approved by the US House of Representatives on Saturday was expected to be used to reinforce Israel’s air defenses.

Israel welcomed the aid, while Hamas condemned it as a “green light” for continued Israeli “aggression.”

The US bill said that more than $9 billion will also be earmarked to address “the dire need for humanitarian assistance for Gaza as well as other vulnerable populations around the world.”

The boost for Israel’s defenses comes after almost all of the more than 300 missiles and drones that Iran launched toward the country a week ago were intercepted, according to the Israeli military.

Israel had vowed to respond to Iran’s first-ever attack on its territory, which was itself retaliation for a deadly April 1 strike on Iran’s embassy consular annex in Damascus.

Iran blamed Israel for that attack.

Israel’s response appeared to come on Friday when explosions were reported in the central Iranian province of Isfahan.

Israeli officials have made no public comment, and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian downplayed the incident.

He told NBC News that Tehran would not respond “as long as there is no new adventure on behalf of the Israeli regime against Iran’s interests.”

On Sunday, Israel said it will hold a “protest talk” with ambassadors from several United Nations Security Council members which voted for the “State of Palestine” to become a full UN member.

France, Japan and others backed the bid which the United States vetoed.

Israel has faced growing global opposition to the war, which has turned vast areas of Gaza into rubble while a siege has left residents without enough water, food, medicines and other vital supplies.

The population “faces famine, malnutrition, and infectious disease outbreaks,” the International Rescue Committee charity warned this week.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also come under pressure within Israel, including to reach a deal for the release of hostages still held by Hamas. Israel estimates 129 captives remain in Gaza, including 34 who the military says are dead.

Families of the hostages were among thousands attending an anti-government protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

Ofir Angrest, whose brother Matan was kidnapped on October 7, called for Jewish Israelis to leave an empty chair at their traditional Seder meals marking the beginning of the holiday Passover on Monday.

“Enough! After more than six months, you’re simply disrespecting me and the families of the hostages,” Angrest said, adding that he was addressing the Israeli cabinet.

(With Agencies)


Belgian journalists injured in Beirut bombing

Updated 5 sec ago
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Belgian journalists injured in Beirut bombing

  • Israel has been carrying out a bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and has also sent its troops across the border
  • The bombardments in Lebanon have cost more than 1,000 lives
Brussels: Two Belgian journalists were injured in Lebanon while reporting on overnight air raids in Beirut, their employer said Thursday, as fighting raged between Israel and Hezbollah.
VTM correspondent Robin Ramaekers suffered facial injuries and cameraman Stijn De Smet was being treated for a leg wound, said a statement by the broadcaster’s parent company, DPG Media.
“Last night there was a bombing in central Beirut. When Robin and Stijn wanted to run a report on that, they got injured,” the firm said, adding the pair were being treated in hospital.
“Both are now in safety and are being cared for.”
The circumstances of the incident were not yet clear, the company said. Belgium’s foreign ministry said it was closely monitoring the situation.
Israel has been carrying out a bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and has also sent its troops across the border.
On Thursday, the Israeli military pounded Beirut with overnight air raids. A total of 17 strikes had hit the capital by dawn, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
One of the strikes hit a Hezbollah rescue facility, a source close to the group told AFP, killing at least six people, according to a Lebanese health ministry toll.
Israel says it is trying to secure its border with Lebanon so tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by nearly a year of hostilities with Hezbollah can return home.
The bombardments in Lebanon have cost more than 1,000 lives and seen Hezbollah’s long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah killed.
Authorities in Lebanon say that around a million people have been displaced.
Last year, a journalist was killed and six other reporters, including two from AFP, wounded by Israeli shelling while covering the cross-border fighting in southern Lebanon.

Palestinian activist Issa Amro wins prize for peaceful resistance

Updated 8 min 19 sec ago
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Palestinian activist Issa Amro wins prize for peaceful resistance

  • 44-year-old founded Youth Against Settlements group, which campaigns against proliferation of Jewish settlements in West Bank
  • When university where he was studying closed in 2003 during Second Intifada, Amro successfully led six-month civil disobedience campaign

Stockholm: Palestinian activist Issa Amro on Thursday accepted the Right Livelihood prize — considered by some an alternative Nobel — for his “nonviolent resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation” in the West Bank, the jury said.
Amro was born in the city of Hebron, a flashpoint West Bank city where roughly 1,000 Jewish settlers live under heavy Israeli military protection amid some 200,000 Palestinians.
He has dedicated his life to fighting against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
The 44-year-old founded the Youth Against Settlements group, which campaigns against the proliferation of Jewish settlements in the territory — communities widely regarded as illegal under international law.
The rights campaigner has been repeatedly detained and tortured by both the Palestinian Authority and by Israel, the foundation said.
“It’s a miracle that I still exist,” said Amro.
When Palestine Polytechnic University, where he was studying, closed in 2003 during the Second Intifada, Amro successfully led a six-month civil disobedience campaign.
“I managed to reopen the university with other students,” Amro said in a statement.
“I graduated as an engineer and as an activist — it became part of my character,” he added.
The Sweden-based Right Livelihood Foundation also honored Joan Carling, a Filipino champion of indigenous rights and Anabela Lemos, a climate activist from Mozambique.
It also gave the nod to research agency Forensic Architecture for its work in uncovering human rights violations around the world.
The foundation said the four prize winners had “each made a profound impact on their communities and the global stage.”
“Their unwavering commitment to speaking out against forces of oppression and exploitation, while strictly adhering to non-violent methods, resonates far beyond their communities,” Right Livelihood said in a statement.
Carling from the Philippines was recognized for having defended the rights of indigenous communities for three decades, particularly in their fight against mining projects.
The foundation celebrated Lemos, who heads the NGO Justica Ambiental (JA!), for her role in opposing liquefied natural gas extraction projects in northern Mozambique.
Forensic Architecture, a London-based research laboratory known for 3D modelling conflict zones, won the distinction for “pioneering digital forensic methods” to ensure accountability of human rights violations around the world.
By teaming up with Ukraine’s Center for Spatial Technologies to reconstruct Mariupol’s Drama Theatre before it was destroyed in 2022, the firm highlighted Russia’s “strategies of terror” and “attempts to obscure evidence of their own crimes,” the foundation said.
Swedish-German philatelist Jakob von Uexkull sold part of his stamp collection to found the Right Livelihood award in 1980, after the foundation behind the Nobel Prizes refused to create new distinctions honoring efforts in the fields of environment and international development.


41,788 Palestinians killed in Gaza offensive since Oct. 7, health ministry says

Updated 7 min 25 sec ago
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41,788 Palestinians killed in Gaza offensive since Oct. 7, health ministry says

  • Ninety-nine Palestinians have been killed and 169 wounded in the past 24 hours

CAIRO: Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 41,788 Palestinians and wounded 96,794 since Oct. 7, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Thursday.
Ninety-nine Palestinians have been killed and 169 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement.
Medics said scores of people were killed a day before in an Israeli strike that hit a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, while another struck the Al-Amal Orphan Society, which also houses displaced persons.
As the war in Gaza triggered by the cross-border Hamas attack on Israel nears its first anniversary on Oct. 7, there has been no let-up in Israeli military operations against the Palestinian Islamist group. The enclave has been left in ruins.


Iran Revolutionary Guards consultant dies from injuries in Israeli strike on Damascus

Updated 25 min 52 sec ago
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Iran Revolutionary Guards consultant dies from injuries in Israeli strike on Damascus

  • The attack appeared to be the same as one reported by Syrian state media,which said that three civilians were killed and nine others injured

DUBAI: A consultant working for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has died from injuries sustained in an Israeli air attack on the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday, Iran’s Student News Network reported on Thursday.
It identified the consultant as Majid Divani, without giving further details.
The attack appeared to be the same as one reported by Syrian state media, which said on Tuesday that three civilians were killed and nine others injured in an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital Damascus.
Syrian air defenses intercepted “hostile targets” over the vicinity of Damascus three times in a row in one night, following explosions that were heard in the capital, state media said on Tuesday.
When asked about the reported attack, the Israeli military said on Tuesday that it does not comment on foreign media reports.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since last year’s Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel.


EU announces extra 30 mln euros humanitarian aid for Lebanon

Updated 03 October 2024
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EU announces extra 30 mln euros humanitarian aid for Lebanon

  • This comes in addition to the 10 million euros already announced on Sept. 29

BRUSSELS: The European Commission announced on Thursday an extra $33.1 million in humanitarian aid for Lebanon, which has been hit by clashes between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
"I am extremely concerned by the constant escalation of tensions in the Middle East. All parties must do their outmost to protect the lives of innocent civilians," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
This comes in addition to the 10 million euros already announced on Sept. 29 and brings total EU humanitarian assistance to the country to over 104 million euros this year.