GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defense agency said a series of Israeli air strikes on Thursday killed at least 58 people, including 12 guards securing aid trucks, while the military said it targeted militants planning to hijack the vehicles.
The latest bloodshed came despite growing optimism that negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal might finally succeed, with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saying on Thursday that the regional “context” had changed in favor of an agreement.
Seven guards were killed in a strike in Rafah, in southern Gaza, while another attack left five guards dead in nearby Khan Yunis, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal said.
“The (Israeli) occupation once again targeted those securing the aid trucks,” Basal told AFP, though the military said it “does not strike humanitarian aid trucks.”
Basal added that around 30 people, most of them children, were wounded in the two strikes.
“The trucks carrying flour were on their way to UNRWA warehouses,” Basal noted, referring to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Witnesses later told AFP that residents looted flour from the trucks after the strikes.
The military said its forces “conducted precise strikes” overnight on armed Hamas militants present in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza.
“All of the terrorists that were eliminated were members of Hamas and planned to violently hijack humanitarian aid trucks and transfer them to Hamas in support of continuing terrorist activity,” a military statement said.
The United Nations and aid agencies have repeatedly warned about the acute humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip, exacerbated by the war that has persisted for more than 14 months.
“Conditions for people across the Gaza Strip are appalling and apocalyptic,” UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told journalists during a visit to Nuseirat in central Gaza.
She added that life-saving aid to “besieged areas in north Gaza governorate has been largely blocked” since the Israeli military launched a sweeping assault there in early October.
In southern Gaza, UNRWA said earlier this week it had successfully delivered enough food aid for 200,000 people.
But on Thursday it said “a serious incident” meant that only one truck out of a convoy of 70 traveling along Gaza’s southern border reached its destination.
The agency did not provide any details on the incident, but called on “all parties to ensure safe, unimpeded and uninterrupted” aid deliveries.
As diplomacy aimed at ending the war appeared to be gaining pace again, the violence continued.
The civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes on two homes, near Nuseirat refugee camp — which was again hit later in the evening — and Gaza City killed 21 people.
Fifteen people, at least six of them children, died “as a result of an Israeli bombing” of a building sheltering displaced people near Nuseirat, Bassal said.
Bassam Al-Habash, a relative of the dead in Nuseirat said: “These people are innocent, they are not wanted. They have nothing to do with the war.”
“They are civilians, and this is not a war between two armies, but a war armed with weapons, planes and Western support against a defenseless people who own nothing.”
Another strike late on Thursday killed at least 25 people and wounded 50 others in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the civil defense said.
In the latest diplomatic effort to secure an end to the violence, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Wednesday calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
The non-binding resolution was rejected by the United States, Israel’s main military backer.
However, in recent days, there have been indications that previously stalled ceasefire negotiations could be revived.
Families of the 96 hostages still in Gaza since the Hamas attack that triggered the war, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead, are pressing for their release.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who visited Israel on Thursday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he “got the sense” that the Israeli leader was “ready to do a deal.”
He also said that the Hamas approach to negotiations had changed, attributing it to the overthrow of their ally Bashar Assad in Syria and the ceasefire that went into effect in the war between Israel and another ally, Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Militants abducted 251 hostages during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
This count includes hostages who died or were killed while held in Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,805 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
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Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 58, hit flour trucks
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Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 58, hit flour trucks
- Around 30 people, most of them children, were wounded in the two strikes
Egyptian woman faces death threats for filming alleged harasser
- Case revives longstanding national debate in Egypt over harassment and violence against women
- A 2013 UN study found that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing harassment
CAIRO: A young Egyptian woman is facing death threats after posting a video showing the face of a man she says repeatedly harassed her, reviving debate over how victims are treated in the country.
Mariam Shawky, an actress in her twenties, filmed the man aboard a crowded Cairo bus earlier this week, accusing him of stalking and harassing her near her workplace on multiple occasions.
“This time, he followed me on the bus,” Shawky, who has been dubbed “the bus girl” by local media, said in a clip posted on TikTok.
“He kept harassing me,” added the woman, who did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
Hoping other passengers would intervene, Shawky instead found herself isolated. The video shows several men at the back of the bus staring at her coldly as she confronts her alleged harasser.
The man mocks her appearance, calls her “trash,” questions her clothing and moves toward her in what appears to be a threatening manner.
No one steps in to help. One male passenger, holding prayer beads, orders her to sit down and be quiet, while another gently restrains the man but does not defend Shawky.
Death threats
As the video spread across social media, the woman received a brief flurry of support, but it was quickly overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse.
Some high-profile public figures fueled the backlash.
Singer Hassan Shakosh suggested she had provoked the situation by wearing a piercing, saying it was “obvious what she was looking for.”
Online, the comments were more extreme. “I’ll be the first to kill you,” one user wrote. “If you were killed, no one would mourn you,” said another.
The case has revived a longstanding national debate in Egypt over harassment and violence against women.
A 2013 UN study found that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing harassment, with more than 80 percent saying they faced it regularly on public transport.
That same year, widespread protests against sexual violence rocked the Egyptian capital.
In 2014, a law criminalizing street harassment was passed. However, progress since then has been limited. Enforcement remains inconsistent and authorities have never released figures on the number of convictions.
Public concern spiked after previous high-profile incidents, including the 2022 killing of university student Nayera Ashraf, stabbed to death by a man whose advances she had rejected.
The perpetrator was executed, yet at the time “some asked for his release,” said prominent Egyptian feminist activist Nadeen Ashraf, whose social-media campaigning helped spark Egypt’s MeToo movement in 2020.
Denials
In the latest case, the authorities moved to act even though the bus company denied any incident had taken place in a statement later reissued by the Ministry of Transport.
The Interior Ministry said that the man seen in the video had been “identified and arrested” the day after the clip went viral.
Confronted with the footage, he denied both the harassment and ever having met the woman before, according to the ministry.
Local media reported he was later released on bail of 1,000 Egyptian pounds (around $20), before being detained again over a pre-existing loan case.
His lawyer has called for a psychiatric evaluation of Shawky, accusing her of damaging Egypt’s reputation.
These images tell “the whole world that there are harassers in Egypt and that Egyptian men encourage harassment, defend it and remain silent,” said lawyer Ali Fayez on Facebook.
Ashraf told AFP that the case revealed above all “a systemic and structural problem.”
She said such incidents were “never taken seriously” and that blame was almost always shifted onto women’s appearance.
“If the woman is veiled, they’ll say her clothes are tight. And if her hair is uncovered, they’ll look at her hair. And even if she wears a niqab, they’ll say she’s wearing makeup.”
“There will always be something.”
Mariam Shawky, an actress in her twenties, filmed the man aboard a crowded Cairo bus earlier this week, accusing him of stalking and harassing her near her workplace on multiple occasions.
“This time, he followed me on the bus,” Shawky, who has been dubbed “the bus girl” by local media, said in a clip posted on TikTok.
“He kept harassing me,” added the woman, who did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
Hoping other passengers would intervene, Shawky instead found herself isolated. The video shows several men at the back of the bus staring at her coldly as she confronts her alleged harasser.
The man mocks her appearance, calls her “trash,” questions her clothing and moves toward her in what appears to be a threatening manner.
No one steps in to help. One male passenger, holding prayer beads, orders her to sit down and be quiet, while another gently restrains the man but does not defend Shawky.
Death threats
As the video spread across social media, the woman received a brief flurry of support, but it was quickly overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse.
Some high-profile public figures fueled the backlash.
Singer Hassan Shakosh suggested she had provoked the situation by wearing a piercing, saying it was “obvious what she was looking for.”
Online, the comments were more extreme. “I’ll be the first to kill you,” one user wrote. “If you were killed, no one would mourn you,” said another.
The case has revived a longstanding national debate in Egypt over harassment and violence against women.
A 2013 UN study found that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing harassment, with more than 80 percent saying they faced it regularly on public transport.
That same year, widespread protests against sexual violence rocked the Egyptian capital.
In 2014, a law criminalizing street harassment was passed. However, progress since then has been limited. Enforcement remains inconsistent and authorities have never released figures on the number of convictions.
Public concern spiked after previous high-profile incidents, including the 2022 killing of university student Nayera Ashraf, stabbed to death by a man whose advances she had rejected.
The perpetrator was executed, yet at the time “some asked for his release,” said prominent Egyptian feminist activist Nadeen Ashraf, whose social-media campaigning helped spark Egypt’s MeToo movement in 2020.
Denials
In the latest case, the authorities moved to act even though the bus company denied any incident had taken place in a statement later reissued by the Ministry of Transport.
The Interior Ministry said that the man seen in the video had been “identified and arrested” the day after the clip went viral.
Confronted with the footage, he denied both the harassment and ever having met the woman before, according to the ministry.
Local media reported he was later released on bail of 1,000 Egyptian pounds (around $20), before being detained again over a pre-existing loan case.
His lawyer has called for a psychiatric evaluation of Shawky, accusing her of damaging Egypt’s reputation.
These images tell “the whole world that there are harassers in Egypt and that Egyptian men encourage harassment, defend it and remain silent,” said lawyer Ali Fayez on Facebook.
Ashraf told AFP that the case revealed above all “a systemic and structural problem.”
She said such incidents were “never taken seriously” and that blame was almost always shifted onto women’s appearance.
“If the woman is veiled, they’ll say her clothes are tight. And if her hair is uncovered, they’ll look at her hair. And even if she wears a niqab, they’ll say she’s wearing makeup.”
“There will always be something.”
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