GAZA: Faced with major food shortages after nearly 14 months of war, Palestinians describe long days hunting for flour and bread in the conflict-ravaged Gaza Strip.
Every morning crowds form outside the few bakeries open in the Palestinian territory, as people desperately try to get a bag of bread at distribution points.
Since the outbreak of war in Gaza last year, charities and international aid organizations have repeatedly warned of crisis levels of hunger for nearly two million people.
A United Nations-backed assessment last month warned of famine looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid a near-halt in food aid after Israel launched an offensive in the area.
Essential goods like water, fresh produce and medicines are also scarce.
Gazans across the territory have told AFP in recent months how they wake up at the crack of dawn just to ensure they can get some flour or bread, with current availability reaching an all-time low.
In the southern city of Khan Yunis, AFP photographers saw dozens of people at a distribution point, bodies pressed against each other.
Over each other’s heads, everyone tries to reach out as far as possible to grab the round bread.
A small child, her face covered in tears, squeezes a coin between her fingers as she makes her way through the crowd of adults.
“I walked about eight kilometers (five miles) to get bread,” Hatem Kullab, a displaced Palestinian living in a neighborhood of makeshift tents, told AFP.
It was in the middle of one of these crowds that two women and a child were trampled to death in a stampede at a bakery in the central Gazan city of Deir el-Balah Friday.
“To get a loaf of bread you need a whole day of eight to 10 hours,” said the brother of one of the women killed, describing his sister’s ordeal as she tried to get bread to feed 10 family members.
“The suffering that my sister went through is suffered by all the Palestinian people,” Jameel Fayyad told AFP, criticizing what he described as poor management of the bakeries.
Fayyad’s anger was largely directed at Israel, but he also blamed the World Food Programme (WFP) and “traders who want to make money on the backs of people.”
Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip told AFP journalists that it is extremely difficult to find the 50-kilogram (110 pounds) bags of flour that would last them several weeks before the war.
“There is no flour, no food, no vegetables in the markets,” Nasser Al-Shawa, 56, said, who, like most residents, was forced to leave his home because of the bombings and lives with his children and grandchildren in central Gaza.
Shawa, who now lives in a friend’s house in Deir el-Balah, says a 50-kilogram bag costs between 500 and 700 shekels ($137 and $192).
Before the war, it cost around 100 shekels.
Inside Gaza where more than half of the buildings have been destroyed, the production is at an almost complete standstill. Flour mills, warehouses storing flour and industrial bakeries are unable to function because they have been so heavily damaged by strikes.
Humanitarian aid is trickling in but aid groups have repeatedly slammed the many constraints imposed on them by Israel, which the country denies.
In the latest blow, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced Sunday it was halting aid deliveries to Gaza via a key crossing point with Israel.
UNRWA said delivery had become impossible, partly due to looting by gangs.
For Layla Hamad, who lives in a tent with her husband and seven children in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi, UNRWA’s decision was “like a bullet to the head.”
She said her family had regularly received “a small quantity” of flour from UNRWA.
“Every day, I think we will not survive, either because we will be killed by Israeli bombing or by hunger,” she said. “There is no third option.”
The majority of private companies that Israel had in the past allowed to bring in food to Gaza say they are no longer able to do so.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,502 deaths, also mostly civilians, according to data from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Gazans walk miles for bread and flour amid war shortages
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Gazans walk miles for bread and flour amid war shortages
- Every morning crowds form outside the few bakeries open in the Palestinian territory, as people desperately try to get a bag of bread at distribution points
- Essential goods like water, fresh produce and medicines are also scarce
Syria’s southern rebels loom large as the country’s new rulers try to form a national army
- Syria’s interim rulers are trying to form a united national army after the fall of Bashar Assad late last year
NAWA:As insurgents raced across Syria in a surprise offensive launched in the country’s northwest late last year, officials from several countries backing either the rebels or Syria’s government met in Qatar on what to do.
According to people briefed on the Dec. 7 meeting, officials from Turkiye, Russia, Iran and a handful of Arab countries agreed that the insurgents would stop their advance in Homs, the last major city north of Damascus, and that internationally mediated talks would take place with Syrian leader Bashar Assad on a political transition.
But insurgent factions from Syria’s south had other plans. They pushed toward the capital, arriving in Damascus’ largest square before dawn. Insurgents from the north, led by the Islamist group Hayyat Tahrir Al-Sham, arrived hours later. Assad, meanwhile, had fled.
HTS, the most organized of the groups, has since established itself as Syria’s de facto rulers after coordinating with the southern fighters during the lighting-fast offensive.
Wariness among the southern factions since then, however, has highlighted questions over how the interim administration can bring together a patchwork of former rebel groups, each with their own leaders and ideology.
HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa has called for a unified national army and security forces. The interim defense minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, has begun meeting with armed groups. But some prominent leaders like southern rebel commander Ahmad Al-Awda have refused to attend.
Officials with the interim government did not respond to questions.
Cradle of the revolution
The southern province of Daraa is widely seen as the cradle of the Syrian uprising in 2011. When anti-government protests were met with repression by Assad’s security forces, “we were forced to carry weapons,” said Mahmoud Al-Bardan, a rebel leader there.
The rebel groups that formed in the south had different dynamics from those in the north, less Islamist and more localized, said Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century International think tank. They also had different backers.
“In the north, Turkiye and Qatar favored Islamist factions very heavily,” he said. “In the south, Jordanian and American involvement nudged the insurgency in a different direction.”
In 2018, factions in Daraa reached a Russian-mediated “reconciliation agreement” with Assad’s government. Some former fighters left for Idlib, the destination for many from areas recaptured by government forces, while others remained.
The deal left many southern factions alive and armed, Lund said.
“We only turned over the heavy weapons … the light weapons remained with us,” Al-Bardan said.
When the HTS-led rebel groups based in the north launched their surprise offensive last year in Aleppo, those weapons were put to use again. Factions in the southern provinces of Daraa, Sweida and Quneitra reactivated, forming a joint operations room to coordinate with northern ones.
Defying international wishes
On Dec. 7, “we had heard from a number of parties that there might be an agreement that … no one would enter Damascus so there could be an agreement on the exit of Bashar Assad or a transitional phase,” said Nassim Abu Ara, an official with one of the largest rebel factions in the south, the 8th Brigade of Al-Awda.
However, “we entered Damascus and turned the tables on these agreements,” he said.
Al-Bardan confirmed that account, asserting that the agreement “was binding on the northern factions” but not the southern ones.
“Even if they had ordered us to stop, we would not have,” he said, reflecting the eagerness among many fighters to remove Assad as soon as possible.
Ammar Kahf, executive director of the Istanbul-based Omran Center for Strategic Studies, who was in Doha on Dec. 7 and was briefed on the meetings, said there was an agreement among countries’ officials that the rebels would stop their offensive in Homs and go to Geneva for negotiations on “transitional arrangements.”
But Kahf said it was not clear that any Syrian faction, including HTS, agreed to the plan. Representatives of countries at the meeting did not respond to questions.
A statement released by the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia, Iran, Qatari, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq after the Dec. 7 meeting said they “stressed the need to stop military operations in preparation for launching a comprehensive political process” but did not give specifics.
The initial hours after armed groups’ arrival in Damascus were chaotic. Observers said the HTS-led forces tried to re-impose order when they arrived. An Associated Press journalist saw an argument break out when HTS fighters tried to stop members of another faction from taking abandoned army munitions.
Abu Ara acknowledged that “there was some chaos” but added, “we have to understand that these people were pent-up and suddenly they achieved the joy of victory in this manner.”
Waiting for a state
During a visit by AP journalists to the western countryside of Daraa province this month, there was no visible presence of HTS forces.
At one former Syrian army site, a fighter with the Free Syrian Army, the main faction in the area, stood guard in jeans and a camouflage shirt. Other local fighters showed off a site where they were storing tanks abandoned by the former army.
“Currently these are the property of the new state and army,” whenever it is formed, said one fighter, Issa Sabaq.
The process of forming those has been bumpy.
On New Year’s Eve, factions in the Druze-majority city of Sweida in southern Syria blocked the entry of a convoy of HTS security forces who had arrived without giving prior notice.
Ahmed Aba Zeid, a Syrian researcher who has studied the southern insurgent groups, said some of the factions have taken a wait-and-see approach before they agree to dissolve and hand over their weapons to the state.
Local armed factions are still the de facto security forces in many areas.
Earlier this month, the new police chief in Daraa city appointed by the HTS-led government, Badr Abdel Hamid, joined local officials in the town of Nawa to discuss plans for a police force there.
Hamid said there had been “constructive and positive cooperation” with factions in the region, adding the process of extending the “state’s influence” takes time.
Abu Ara said factions are waiting to understand their role. “Will it be a strong army, or a border guard army, or is it for counterterrorism?” he asked.
Still, he was optimistic that an understanding will be reached.
“A lot of people are afraid that there will be a confrontation, that there won’t be integration or won’t be an agreement,” he said. “But we want to avoid this at all costs, because our country is very tired of war.”
Hamas’ tight grip on Gaza complicates plan for lasting peace
- Hamas maintains control over Gaza’s administration and security forces
- Israel faces dilemma with Hamas’ entrenched power in Gaza
CAIRO: In neighborhoods levelled by 15 months of war with Israel, Hamas officials are overseeing the clearance of rubble in the wake of Sunday’s ceasefire. The group’s gunmen are guarding aid convoys on Gaza’s dusty roads, and its blue-uniformed police once again patrol city streets, sending a clear message: Hamas remains in charge.
Israeli officials have described a parade of jubilant Hamas fighters that celebrated the ceasefire on Sunday in front of cheering crowds as a carefully orchestrated attempt to exaggerate the Palestinian militant group’s strength.
But, in the days since the ceasefire took effect, Gaza’s Hamas-run administration has moved quickly to reimpose security, to curb looting, and to start restoring basic services to parts of the enclave, swathes of which have been reduced to wasteland by the Israeli offensive.
Reuters spoke to more than a dozen residents, officials, regional diplomats and security experts who said that, despite Israel’s vow to destroy it, Hamas remains deeply entrenched in Gaza and its hold on power represents a challenge to implementing a permanent ceasefire.
The Islamist group not only controls Gaza’s security forces, but its administrators run ministries and government agencies, paying salaries for employees and coordinating with international NGOs, they said.
On Tuesday, its police and gunmen – who for months were kept off the streets by Israeli airstrikes – were stationed in neighborhoods through the Strip.
“We want to prevent any kind of security vacuum,” said Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office. He said that some 700 police were protecting aid convoys and not a single truck had been looted since Sunday – a contrast to the massive theft of food by criminal gangs during the conflict.
A spokesperson for the United Nations in Geneva confirmed on Tuesday there had been no reports of looting or attacks on aid workers since the ceasefire took effect.
In recent weeks, Israeli airstrikes have targeted lower-ranking administrators in Gaza, in an apparent bid to break Hamas’ grip on government. Israel had already eliminated Hamas’ leadership, including political chief Ismail Haniyeh and the architects of the Oct. 7 attack, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.
Despite the losses, Al-Thawabta said the Hamas-run administration continued to function. “Currently, we have 18,000 employees working daily to provide services to citizens,” he said.
The Hamas-run municipalities had begun on Sunday clearing the rubble from some roads to vehicles to pass, while workers repaired pipes and infrastructure to restore running water to neighborhoods. On Tuesday, dozens of heavy trucks ferried debris from destroyed buildings along the enclave’s dusty main arteries.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not articulated a vision for Gaza’s postwar future beyond insisting the Islamist group can play no role and stating that the Palestinian Authority – a body set up under the Oslo peace accords three decades ago that partially administers the occupied West Bank — also cannot be trusted under its current leadership. The Israeli government did not respond to Reuters’ questions.
Joost Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group, said Hamas’ firm grip on Gaza presented Israel with a dilemma.
“Israel has a choice, to continue fighting in the future and killing people — and that hasn’t worked in the past 15 months — or it can allow an arrangement where the Palestinian Authority takes control with Hamas’ acquiescence,” Hiltermann said.
Hamas’ military capability is hard to assess because its rocket arsenal remains hidden and many of its best trained fighters may have been killed, Hiltermann said, but it remains by far the dominant armed group in Gaza: “Nobody is talking about the PA taking over Gaza without Hamas’ consent.”
While senior Hamas officials have expressed support for a unity government, Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority and a longtime adversary of Hamas, has not given his assent. Abbas’s office and the Palestinian Authority did not respond to a request for comment.
Fresh negotiations
Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel must withdraw its troops from central Gaza and permit the return of Palestinians to the north during an initial six-week phase, in which some hostages will be released. Starting from the 16th day of the ceasefire, the two sides should negotiate a second phase, expected to include a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops. Reconstruction, expected to cost billions of dollars and last for years, would only begin in a third and final phase.
The deal has divided opinion in Israel. While there was widespread celebration of the return of the first three hostages on Sunday, many Israelis want to see Hamas destroyed for its Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage.
Even before the ceasefire took effect, members of Netanyahu’s cabinet said they favored returning to war to remove Hamas from power, once hostages have returned home. Three far-right ministers resigned.
“There is no future of peace, stability and security for both sides if Hamas stays in power in the Gaza Strip,” Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Sunday.
A spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, Abu Ubaida, told Reuters the militant group would honor the terms of the ceasefire and urged Israel to do the same.
Fifteen months of war have left Gaza a wasteland of rubble, bombed-out buildings and makeshift encampments, with hundreds of thousands of desperate people sheltering from the winter cold and living on whatever aid can reach them. More than 46,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The ceasefire deal calls for 600 trucks of aid per day to reach Gaza. Al-Thawabta, the spokesman for the Hamas-run administration, said it was liaising with UN bodies and international relief organizations about security for aid routes and warehouses, but the agencies were handling the distribution of aid.
A UN damage assessment released this month showed that just clearing away the more than 50 million tons of rubble left in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2 billion.
On Sunday, as Hamas’ security forces paraded on the streets, some residents had expressed pride that it had survived the onslaught.
“Name me one country that could withstand Israel’s war-machine for 15 months,” said Salah Abu Rezik, a 58-year-old factory worker. He praised Hamas for helping to distribute aid to hungry Gazans during the conflict and trying to enforce a measure of security.
“Hamas is an idea and you can’t kill an idea,” Abu Rezik said, predicting the group would rebuild.
Others voiced anger that Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack had brought destruction to Gaza.
“We had homes and hotels and restaurants. We had a life. Today we have nothing, so what kind of a victory is this?” said Ameen, 30, a Gaza City civil engineer, displaced in Khan Younis. “When the war stops, Hamas must not rule Gaza alone.”
No rivals
While the Palestinian Authority says it is the only authority with the legitimacy to govern post-war Gaza, it has no presence in the enclave and little popular support, polls show.
Since 2007, when Hamas drove out the Palestinian Authority dominated by the rival faction Fatah after a brief civil war, it has crushed opposition in Gaza. Supported by funds from Iran, it built a feared security apparatus and a military organization based around a vast network of tunnels — much of which Israel says it destroyed during the war.
Israel floated tentative ideas for post-war Gaza, including coopting local clan leaders — a number of whom were immediately assassinated by Hamas — or using members of Gazan civil society with no militant ties to run the enclave. But none has gained any traction.
Key donors, including the United Arab Emirates and US President Donald Trump’s new administration, have stressed that Hamas — which is designated as a terrorist organization by many Western countries — cannot remain in power in Gaza after the war. Diplomats have been discussing models involving international peacekeepers, including one that would see the United Arab Emirates and the United States, along with other nations, temporarily overseeing governance, security and reconstruction of Gaza until a reformed Palestinian Authority is able to take charge.
Another model, supported by Egypt, would see a joint committee made up of both Fatah and Hamas run Gaza under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority.
Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer now at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies in Tel Aviv, described Hamas’ public willingness to discuss a unity government as “cosmetic.”
“As long as they are behind the scenes, handling matters, they don’t care that there will be a committee as a front,” he said.
On Monday, shortly after taking office, Trump expressed skepticism about the Gaza ceasefire deal, when asked if he was confident that all three phases of the agreement would be implemented. He didn’t elaborate further.
A spokesperson for the Trump camp did not respond to a request for comment.
Turkiye detains nine people over ski resort hotel fire that killed 76
- The fire occurred at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the Kartalkaya ski resort in the Bolu mountains
ANKARA: Turkiye has detained nine people, including the owner of the hotel, in connection with a deadly fire that claimed the lives of 76 people and injured dozens at a ski resort in western Turkiye, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said early Wednesday.
Yerlikaya also reported that the bodies of 45 victims had been handed over to their families, while DNA tests were being conducted to identify the remaining bodies at the forensic institute.
The fire occurred at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the Kartalkaya ski resort in the Bolu mountains.
The hotel, where the fire broke out, expressed deep sorrow in a statement on Wednesday and pledged full cooperation with the investigation.
“We are cooperating with authorities to shed light on all aspects of this incident,” the statement said. “We are deeply saddened by the losses and want you to know that we share this pain with all our hearts.”
The 12-story hotel, which had 238 registered guests, was consumed by flames after the fire started on the restaurant floor around 3:30 a.m. Survivors described scenes of panic as they fled through smoke-filled corridors and jumped from windows to escape.
Authorities are facing growing criticism over the hotel’s safety measures, as survivors reported that no fire alarms went off during the incident. Guests said they had to navigate the smoke-filled corridors in complete darkness.
President Tayyip Erdogan declared Wednesday a day of national mourning following the tragedy, which occurred during the peak of the winter tourism season, with many families from Istanbul and Ankara traveling to the Bolu mountains for skiing.
Turkiye arrests leader of far-right party on charges of inciting violence through social media
- Ozdag, a 63-year-old former academic, is an outspoken critic of Turkiye’s refugee policies and has called for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees
ANKARA, Turkiye: Turkish authorities on Tuesday arrested the leader of a far-right opposition party on charges of inciting violence through a series of anti-refugee posts on social media, his party said.
Umit Ozdag, the leader of Turkiye’s anti-immigrant Victory Party, was detained by police on Monday as part of an investigation into allegations that he insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a speech he delivered a day earlier.
The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s office, however, released Ozdag from custody on charges of insulting the president but subsequently ordered his arrest on charges of “inciting hatred and hostility among the public,” the party said.
Prosecutors presented 11 of the politician’s posts on the social platform X as evidence against him, the party said. The prosecutor’s office also held Ozdag responsible for anti-Syrian refugee rioting that erupted in the central Turkish province of Kayseri last year, during which hundreds of homes and businesses were attacked.
Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul who is seen as a possible candidate to challenge Erdogan in the next elections, criticized Ozdag’s arrest, saying on X that “Everyone knows that this is political meddling in the judiciary.”
Imamoglu, who is a member of Turkiye’s main opposition party, was convicted of insulting members of Turkiye’s electoral board in 2022 and faces a two-year ban from politics if his conviction is upheld by a court of appeals.
Ozdag, a 63-year-old former academic, is an outspoken critic of Turkiye’s refugee policies and has called for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees.
The politician was being taken to Silivri prison on the outskirts of Istanbul, according to his party.
Mehmet Ali Sehirlioglu, the party’s spokesman, would temporarily assume leadership of the Victory Party.
Yemen Red Sea port capacity down sharply after hostilities, UN says
- Houthis have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip
GENEVA: Operations at a Red Sea port in Yemen used for aid imports have fallen to about a quarter of its capacity, a UN official said on Tuesday, adding it was not certain that a Gaza ceasefire would end attacks between the Iran-backed Houthis and Israel.
Houthis have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This has prompted Israel to strike port and energy facilities, including the Red Sea port of Hodeidah.
“(The) impact of airstrikes on Hodeidah Harbor, particularly in the last weeks, is very important,” Julien Harneis, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen told a UN meeting in Geneva on Tuesday via videolink.
Four of the port’s five tugboats needed to escort the large ships bringing imports had sunk, while the fifth was damaged, he said, without attributing blame.
“The civilian crews who man them are obviously very hesitant. The capacity of the harbor is down to about a quarter,” he added, saying the port was used to transit a significant portion of imported aid.
Since a Gaza ceasefire agreement last week, Yemen’s Houthis have said they will limit their attacks on commercial vessels to Israel-linked ships, provided the Gaza ceasefire is fully implemented.
“We are hopeful that sanity will prevail and people will be focused on solutions and peace, but we are nonetheless prepared as a humanitarian community for various degradations,” said Harneis, adding that the agency had contingency plans.
The Iran-aligned Houthis have controlled most of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, since seizing power during 2014 and early 2015.
