DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli strikes killed at least 51 people in southern Gaza overnight, including women and children, as the military launched ground operations in the hard-hit city of Khan Younis, Palestinian medical officials said Wednesday.
Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets across Gaza nearly a year after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war there, and even as attention has shifted to Lebanon and Iran. Israel has launched ground operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Tehran fired ballistic missiles on Israel late Tuesday.
Separately, Hezbollah said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops in the Lebanese border town of Odaisseh, forcing them to retreat.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military or independent confirmation of the fighting, which would mark the first ground combat since Israeli troops crossed the border this week. Israeli media reported infantry and tank units operating in southern Lebanon after the military sent thousands of additional troops and artillery to the border.
The military warned residents to evacuate another 24 villages in southern Lebanon after making a similar announcement the day before. Hundreds of thousands have already fled their homes as the conflict has intensified.
Palestinians describe massive raid in Gaza
The Health Ministry in Gaza said at least 51 people were killed and 82 wounded in the operation in Khan Younis that began early Wednesday. Records at the European Hospital show that seven women and 12 children, as young as 22 months old, were among those killed.
Another 23 people, including two children, were killed in separate strikes across Gaza, according to local hospitals.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Residents said Israel had carried out heavy airstrikes as its ground forces staged an incursion into three neighborhoods in Khan Younis. Mahmoud Al-Razd, a resident who said four relatives were killed in the raids, described heavy destruction and said first responders had struggled to reach destroyed homes.
“The explosions and shelling were massive,” he told The Associated Press. “Many people are thought to be under the rubble, and no one can retrieve them.”
Israel carried out a weekslong offensive earlier this year in Khan Younis that left much of Gaza’s second largest city in ruins. Over the course of the war, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to areas of Gaza where they have previously fought Hamas and other armed groups as the militants have regrouped.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, on Oct. 7 and took around 250 hostage. Around 100 are still in captivity in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say a little more than half were women and children. The military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Iran fires missiles to avenge attacks on militant allies
Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel on Tuesday in what it said was retaliation for a series of devastating blows Israel has landed in recent weeks against Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began.
Israelis scrambled for bomb shelters as air raid sirens sounded and the orange glow of missiles streaked across the night sky.
The Israeli military said it intercepted many of the incoming Iranian missiles, though some landed in central and southern Israel and two people were lightly wounded by shrapnel.
Several missiles landed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where one of them killed a Palestinian worker from Gaza who had been stranded in the territory since the war broke out.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate against Iran, which he said “made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it.”
US President Joe Biden said his administration is “fully supportive” of Israel and that he’s in “active discussion” with aides about what the appropriate response should be.
Iran said it would respond to any violation of its sovereignty with even heavier strikes on Israeli infrastructure.
Hezbollah and Hamas are close allies backed by Iran, and each escalation has raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East that could draw in Iran and the United States, which has rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.
Iran said it fired Tuesday’s missiles as retaliation for attacks that killed leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iranian military. It referenced Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, both killed in an Israeli airstrike last week in Beirut. It also mentioned Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader in Hamas who was assassinated in Tehran in a suspected Israeli attack in July.
The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday morning to address the escalating situation in the Middle East.
Israel says its forces are operating in Lebanon
Israel is meanwhile carrying out what it says are limited ground incursions into southern Lebanon. Israeli airstrikes and artillery have been pounding southern Lebanon as Hezbollah fires dozens of rockets, missiles and drones into Israel, where there have been few casualties.
Israel has said it will continue to strike Hezbollah until it is safe for tens of thousands of its citizens displaced from homes near the Lebanon border to return. Hezbollah has vowed to keep firing rockets into Israel until there is a ceasefire in Gaza with Hamas.
Israel has warned people in southern Lebanon to evacuate to the north of the Awali River, some 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border and much farther than the Litani River, which marks the northern edge of a UN-declared zone intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah after their 2006 war. The border region has largely emptied out over the past year as the two sides have traded fire.
Israeli strikes have killed over 1,000 people in Lebanon over the past two weeks, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.
Hezbollah is a widely seen as the most powerful armed group in the region, with tens of thousands of fighters and an arsenal of 150,000 rockets and missiles. The last round of fighting in 2006 ended in a stalemate, and both sides have spent the past two decades preparing for their next showdown.
Palestinian officials say 51 killed in Israeli strikes on southern Gaza
https://arab.news/zb3aj
Palestinian officials say 51 killed in Israeli strikes on southern Gaza
- Israel continues to strike Gaza despite its attention shifting to conflicts with Lebanon and Iran
- Records at European hospital show seven women and 12 children were among 51 killed
Trump says Israel should ‘hit’ Iran’s nuclear facilities
- “When they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later,” Trump said
WASHINGTON: Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump said Friday he believes Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in response to the Islamic republic’s recent missile barrage.
The former president, speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina, referred to a question posed to Democratic President Joe Biden this week about the possibility of Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear program.
“When they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later,” Trump said.
American killed in Lebanon was a US citizen, State Dept says
- State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller earlier this week said it was Washington’s understanding that Jawad was a legal permanent resident, not an American citizen. On Friday, the department said that he was a US citizen
WASHINGTON: An American killed in Lebanon this week was a US citizen, a State Department spokesperson said on Friday, adding that Washington was working to understand the circumstances of the incident.
Kamel Ahmad Jawad, from Dearborn, Michigan, was killed in Lebanon in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday, according to his daughter, a friend and the US congresswoman representing his district.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller earlier this week said it was Washington’s understanding that Jawad was a legal permanent resident, not an American citizen. On Friday, the department said that he was a US citizen.
“We are aware and alarmed of reports of the death of Kamel Jawad, who we have confirmed is a US citizen,” the spokesperson said.
“As we have noted repeatedly, it is a moral and strategic imperative that Israel take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm. Any loss of civilian life is a tragedy.”
Israel says it is targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, who have been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began a year ago.
Its recent military campaign in Lebanon has killed hundreds and wounded thousands, according to the Lebanese government, which has not said how many of the casualties were civilians versus Hezbollah members. The Israeli bombardment has also driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes.
The governor of Michigan has urged the US government to do more to rescue Americans stuck in Lebanon, many of them from Michigan, during Israel’s military offensive in the country.
Tunisians protest against President Saied two days before presidential vote
- The opposition’s anger flared after presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was handed down three prison sentences totalling 14 years
TUNIS: Hundreds of Tunisians marched in the capital on Friday, escalating protests against President Kais Saied, two days before what they say is an unfair presidential vote in which Saied has removed most other candidates to remain in power.
Protesters, who held up banners reading “Farce elections” and “Freedoms, not a lifelong presidency,” marched to Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the main thoroughfare in Tunis and a focus point in 2011 protests that toppled former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Political tensions in the North African country have risen since an electoral commission named by Saied disqualified three other prominent candidates, and an independent court has been stripped of authority to adjudicate on election disputes by the parliament.
The opposition’s anger flared after presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was handed down three prison sentences totalling 14 years.
He has been in jail since he was arrested a month ago on charges of forging electoral documents.
Saied now faces just two rival candidates, Zammel and Zouhair Maghzaoui, who was a former Saied ally and then turned critic.
Protesters chanted slogans against Saied: “The people want the fall of the regime” and Dictator Saied ... your turn has come.”
“Tunisians are not accustomed to such an election. In 2011, 2014 and 2019 they expressed their opinions freely, but this election does not allow them the right to choose their destiny,” said Zied Ghanney, an opposition figure.
Hamas counters abduction claim, says Yazidi woman’s Gaza departure was voluntary
- “The Yazidi woman left the government facility to the crossing on her own, with the knowledge of her deceased husband’s family and the Palestinian government
- A US defense official said on Thursday the American military did not have a role in the evacuation
CAIRO: The Islamist group Hamas rejected what it called “a false narrative and fabricated story” about a Yazidi woman Israel said was freed in Gaza in a secret operation involving Israel, the United States and Iraq.
The woman, whom Israeli officials have said was taken captive when she was 11 years old and sold to a Hamas member, had never been abducted or sold, and was able to leave Gaza with the knowledge of the Hamas authorities, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Friday.
It said the 25-year old woman, identified as Fawzia Sido, was married to a Palestinian who fought alongside the Syrian opposition forces before he was killed. She later moved to live with his mother in Turkiye before traveling to Egypt, where she continued to live with her mother-in-law and later crossed into Gaza legally.
Years after she moved to live in Gaza, she married her husband’s brother before he was killed during the ongoing Israeli military offensive, Hamas said.
“She requested to contact her family because she felt increasingly unsafe in Gaza amid the intense bombing and brutal attacks by the Israeli occupation. She asked for evacuation, especially after her husband was martyred,” the Gaza government media office said.
“The Yazidi woman left the government facility to the crossing on her own, with the knowledge of her deceased husband’s family and the Palestinian government. The occupation did not ‘rescue’ her, as falsely claimed in its statement aimed at misleading public opinion,” it added.
Reuters could not reach the woman directly for comment on Thursday, with Iraqi officials saying she was resting after having been reunited with her family in northern Iraq.
On Thursday, the Israeli military said it had coordinated with the US Embassy in Jerusalem and “other international actors” in the operation to free Sido.
It said in a statement her captor had been killed during the Gaza war, presumably by an Israeli strike, and she then fled to a hideout inside the Gaza Strip.
“In a complex operation coordinated between Israel, the United States, and other international actors, she was recently rescued in a secret mission from the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing,” it said.
A US defense official said on Thursday the American military did not have a role in the evacuation.
She was freed after more than four months of efforts that involved several attempts that failed due to the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, Silwan Sinjaree, chief of staff of Iraq’s foreign minister, told Reuters on Thursday.
Iraq and Israel do not have any diplomatic ties.
“The narrative the occupation attempted to promote is entirely false. The woman traveled to Gaza through multiple airports and official border crossings,” the Hamas statement said.
“How could she pass through all these checkpoints without security noticing, only for the occupation to later claim she was kidnapped?” it added.
Egypt’s plan to save some dough: cut the wheat in bread
- But bakers, millers and consumers fear the product will smell and taste different
RIYADH: Egypt plans to save millions of dollars in import costs by replacing a fifth of the wheatflour in the nation’s bread with cheaper ingredients such as corn or sorghum, industry sources said on Friday.
But bakers and millers reacted with anger when the plan was put to them by the Supply Ministry, and consumers fear their bread will taste different. “The change could be unpopular, producing bread with a different texture and smell,” said Hesham Soliman, a trader in Cairo.
Bakeries oppose the plan because coarser flour requires lengthier baking and would increase labor costs. Mills are also opposed because they are paid based on how much wheat they process, which would be reduced.
Egypt has tried wheat substitution to reduce imports before. Corn was used for several years two decades ago before campaigning by industry groups pushed the government to abandon it.
In another money-saving move, the government raised the price of subsidised bread this year for the first time in decades.
Egypt needs about 8.25 million tonnes of wheat a year to make subsidised bread available to more than 70 million people. It is one of the world’s largest wheat importers, mostly from Russia, at a cost of more than $2 billion a year.
