Israel’s fatal shooting of a pregnant Palestinian woman puts the focus on West Bank violence

Mohammed Shula displays a picture of his hospitalized son, Yazan, while inside a relative's house where he and his wife have taken refuge at the West Bank village of Kafr al-Labad, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 12 February 2025
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Israel’s fatal shooting of a pregnant Palestinian woman puts the focus on West Bank violence

  • Across the West Bank and east Jerusalem, at least 905 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry

KAFR AL-LABAD, West Bank: The call came in the middle of the night, Mohammed Shula said. His daughter-in-law, eight months pregnant with her first child, was whispering. There was panic in her voice.
“Help, please,” Shula recalled her saying. “You have to save us.”
Minutes later, Sondos Shalabi was fatally shot.
Shalabi and her husband, 26-year-old Yazan Shula, had fled their home in the early hours of Sunday as Israeli security forces closed in on Nur Shams refugee camp, a crowded urban district in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.
Israeli military vehicles surrounded the camp days earlier, part of a larger crackdown on Palestinian militants across the northern occupied West Bank that has escalated since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza took effect last month. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has announced the expansion of the army’s operations, saying it aimed to stop Iran — Hamas’ ally — from opening up a new front in the occupied territory.
Palestinians see the shooting of Shalabi, 23, as part of a worrying trend toward more lethal, warlike Israeli tactics in the West Bank. The Israeli army issued a short statement afterward, saying it had referred her shooting to the military police for criminal investigation.
Also on Sunday, just a few streets away, another young Palestinian woman, 21, was killed by the Israeli army. An explosive device it had planted detonated as she approached her front door.
In response, the Israeli army said that a wanted militant was in her house, compelling Israeli forces to break down the door. It said the woman did not leave despite the soldiers’ calls. The army said it “regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians.”
Across the West Bank and east Jerusalem, at least 905 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Many appear to have been militants killed in gunbattles during Israeli raids. But rock-throwing protesters and uninvolved civilians — including a 2-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and 73-year-old man — have also been killed in recent weeks.
“The basic rules of fighting, of confronting the Palestinians, is different now,” said Maher Kanan, a member of the emergency response team in the nearby village of Anabta, describing what he sees as the army’s new attitude and tactics. “The displacement, the number of civilians killed, they are doing here what they did in Gaza.”
Mohammed Shula, 58, told The Associated Press that his son and daughter-in-law said they started plotting their flight from Nur Shams last week as Israeli drones crisscrossed the sky, Palestinian militants boobytrapped the roads and their baby’s due date approached.
His son “was worried about (Shalabi) all the time. He knew that she wouldn’t be able to deliver the baby if the siege got worse,” he said.
Yazan Shula, a construction worker in Israel who lost his job after the Israeli government banned nearly 200,000 Palestinian workers from entering its territory, couldn’t wait to be a father, his own father said.
Shalabi, quiet and kind, was like a daughter to him — moving into their house in Nur Shams 18 month sago, after marrying his son. “This baby is what they were living for,” he said.
Early Sunday, the young couple packed up some clothes and belongings. The plan was simple — they would drive to the home of Shalabi’s parents outside the camp, some miles away in Tulkarem where soldiers weren’t operating. It was safer there, and near the hospital where Shalabi planned to give birth. Yazan Shula’s younger brother, 19-year-old Bilal, also wanted to get out and jumped in the backseat.
Not long after the three of them drove off, there was a burst of gunfire. Mohammed Shula’s phone rang.
His daughter-in-law’s breaths came in gasps, he said. An Israeli sniper had shot her husband, she told her father-in-law, and blood was flowing from the back of his head. She was unscathed, but had no idea what to do.
He coached her into staying calm. He told her to knock on the door of any house to ask for help. Her phone on speaker, he could hear her knocking and shrieking, he said. No one was answering.
She told him she could see soldiers approaching. The line went dead, said Mohammed Shula, who then called the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service.
“We couldn’t go outside because we were afraid we’d be shot,” said Suleiman Zuheiri, 65, a neighbor of the Shula family who was helping the medics reach their bodies. “We tried and tried. All in vain. (The medics) kept getting turned back, and the girl kept bleeding.”
Bilal Shula wasn’t hurt. He was arrested from the scene and detained for several hours.
The Red Crescent said that the International Committee of the Red Cross had secured approval from the Israeli military to allow medics inside the camp. But the paramedics were detained twice, for a half-hour each time, as they made their way toward the battered car, it said.
When asked why soldiers had blocked ambulances, the Israeli military repeated that it launched an investigation into the events surrounding Shalabi’s killing.
It wasn’t until after 8 a.m. that medics finally reached the young couple, and were detained a third time while rushing the husband out of the camp to the hospital, the Red Crescent said.
Yazan Shula was unconscious and in critical condition, and, as of Tuesday, remains on life support at a hospital. Shalabi was found dead. Her fetus also did not survive the shooting.
Mohammed Shula keeps thinking about how soldiers saw Shalabi’s body bleeding on the ground and did nothing to help as they handcuffed his other son and marched him into their vehicle.
“Why did they shoot them? They were doing nothing wrong. They could have stopped them, asked a question, but no, they just shot,” he said, his fingers busily rubbing a strand of prayer beads.
Israeli security forces invaded the camp some hours later. Explosions resounded through the alleyways. Armored bulldozers rumbled down the roads, chewing up the pavement and rupturing underground water pipes. The electricity went out. Then the taps ran dry.
Before Mohammed Shula could process what was happening, he said, Israeli troops banged on his front door and ordered everyone — his daughter, son and several grandchildren, one of them a year old, another 2 months old — to leave their home.
The Israeli military denied it was carrying out forcible evacuations in the West Bank, saying that it was facilitating the departure of civilians who wanted to leave the combat zone on their own accord. It did not respond to follow-up questions about why over a dozen Palestinian civilians interviewed in Nur Shams camp made the same claims about their forcible displacement.
Mohammed Shula pointed to a bag of baby diapers in the corner of his friend’s living room. That’s all he had time to bring with him, he said, not even photographs, or clothes.

 


US strike on Yemen fuel port kills at least 58, Houthi media say

Updated 56 min 9 sec ago
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US strike on Yemen fuel port kills at least 58, Houthi media say

  • The US has vowed not to halt the large-scale strikes begun last month, unless the Houthis cease attacks on Red Sea shipping

WASHINGTON: US strikes on a fuel port in Yemen killed at least 58 people, Houthi-run Al Masirah TV said, one of the deadliest since the United States began its attacks on the Iran-backed militants.

The United States has vowed not to halt the large-scale strikes begun last month in its biggest military operation in the Middle East since President Donald Trump took office in January, unless the Houthis cease attacks on Red Sea shipping.

Al Masirah TV said 126 people were also wounded in Thursday’s strikes on the western fuel port of Ras Isa, which the US military said aimed to cut off a source of fuel for the Houthi militant group.

Responding to a Reuters query for comment on the Houthis’ casualty figure and its own estimate, the US Central Command said it had none beyond the initial announcement of the attacks.

“The objective of these strikes was to degrade the economic source of power of the Houthis, who continue to exploit and bring great pain upon their fellow countrymen,” it had said in a post on X.

Since November 2023, the Houthis have launched dozens of drone and missile attacks on vessels transiting the waterway, saying they were targeting ships linked to Israel in protest over the war in Gaza.

They halted attacks on shipping lanes during a two-month ceasefire in Gaza. Although they vowed to resume strikes after Israel renewed its assault on Gaza last month, they have not claimed any since.

In March, two days of US attacks killed more than 50 people, Houthi officials said.


Lebanon says one killed in a renewed Israeli strike near Sidon

Updated 18 April 2025
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Lebanon says one killed in a renewed Israeli strike near Sidon

  • Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes in Lebanon

Beirut: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike on Friday hit a vehicle near the southern coastal city of Sidon, killing one person.
Despite a November 27 ceasefire that sought to halt more than a year of conflict — including two months of all-out war — between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes in Lebanon.
“The attack carried out by the Israeli enemy against a car on the Sidon-Ghaziyeh road resulted in one dead,” said a health ministry statement on the fourth consecutive day of Israeli attacks on the south where Israel says it has targeted Hezbollah militants.
An AFP journalist said the Israeli attack hit a four-wheel-drive vehicle, sending a pillar of black smoke into the sky.
The Lebanese army sealed off the area as firemen fought the blaze.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike, but the Israeli military has said it was behind previous attacks this week that it said killed members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.
Hezbollah, significantly weakened by the war, insists it is adhering to the November ceasefire, even as Israeli attacks persist.

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Gaza rescuers say 15 killed in Israeli strikes

Updated 27 min 1 sec ago
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Gaza rescuers say 15 killed in Israeli strikes

  • On Thursday the civil defense agency reported the deaths of at least 40 residents in Israeli strikes

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Friday that 15 people, including 10 from the same family, had been killed in two overnight Israeli strikes.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said on Telegram that “our crews recovered the bodies of 10 martyrs and a large number of wounded from the house of the Baraka family and the neighboring houses targeted by the Israeli occupation forces in the Bani Suhaila area east of Khan Yunis,” in the southern Gaza Strip.
Bassal later announced that a separate strike hit two houses in northern Gaza’s Tal Al-Zaatar, where crews had “recovered the bodies of five people.”

Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza

Israeli airstrikes hit around 40 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past day, the military said on Friday, hours after Hamas rejected an Israeli ceasefire offer that it said fell short of its demand to agree a full end to the war.
Last month, the Israeli military broke off a two-month truce that had largely halted fighting in Gaza and has since pushed in from the north and south, seizing almost a third of the enclave as it seeks to pressure Hamas into agreeing to release hostages and disarm.
The military said troops were operating in the Shabura and Tel Al-Sultan areas near the southern city of Rafah, as well as in northern Gaza, where it has taken control of large areas east of Gaza City.
Egyptian mediators have been trying to revive the January ceasefire deal, which broke down when Israel resumed airstrikes and sent ground troops back into Gaza, but there has been little sign that the two sides have moved closer on fundamental issues.
Late on Thursday, Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
But he dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. The ceasefire offer it made through Egyptian mediators includes talks on a final settlement to the war but no firm agreement.
Defense Minister Israel Katz also said this week that troops would remain in the buffer zone around the border that now extends deep into Gaza and cuts the enclave in two, even after any settlement.


Israeli military intercepts missile launched from Yemen

Updated 18 April 2025
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Israeli military intercepts missile launched from Yemen

  • Iran-backed Houthi militia have regularly fired missiles and drones targeting Israel

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said Friday it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, from where the Iran-backed Houthi militia have regularly fired missiles and drones targeting Israel.
“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted,” Israel’s army said on Telegram, adding that aerial defense systems had been deployed “to intercept the threat.”


Cash crunch leaves Syrians queueing for hours to collect salaries

Updated 18 April 2025
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Cash crunch leaves Syrians queueing for hours to collect salaries

  • Syria has been struggling to emerge from the wake of nearly 14 years of civil war, and its banking sector is no exception
  • The liquidity crisis has forced authorities to drastically limit cash withdrawals, leaving much of the population struggling to make ends meet

DAMASCUS: Seated on the pavement outside a bank in central Damascus, Abu Fares’s face is worn with exhaustion as he waits to collect a small portion of his pension.
“I’ve been here for four hours and I haven’t so much as touched my pension,” said the 77-year-old, who did not wish to give his full name.
“The cash dispensers are under-stocked and the queues are long,” he continued.
Since the overthrow of president Bashar Assad last December, Syria has been struggling to emerge from the wake of nearly 14 years of civil war, and its banking sector is no exception.
Decades of punishing sanctions imposed on the Assad dynasty – which the new authorities are seeking to have lifted – have left about 90 percent of Syrians under the poverty line, according to the United Nations.
The liquidity crisis has forced authorities to drastically limit cash withdrawals, leaving much of the population struggling to make ends meet.
Prior to his ousting, Assad’s key ally Russia held a monopoly on printing banknotes. The new authorities have only announced once that they have received a shipment of banknotes from Moscow since Assad’s overthrow.
In a country with about 1.25 million public sector employees, civil servants must queue at one of two state banks or affiliated ATMs to make withdrawals, capped at about 200,000 Syrian pounds, the equivalent on the black market of $20 per day.
In some cases, they have to take a day off just to wait for the cash.
“There are sick people, elderly... we can’t continue like this,” said Abu Fares.
“There is a clear lack of cash, and for that reason we deactivate the ATMs at the end of the workday,” an employee at a private bank said, preferring not to give her name.
A haphazard queue of about 300 people stretches outside the Commercial Bank of Syria. Some are sitting on the ground.
Afraa Jumaa, a civil servant, said she spends most of the money she withdraws on the travel fare to get to and from the bank.
“The conditions are difficult and we need to withdraw our salaries as quickly as possible,” said the 43-year-old.
“It’s not acceptable that we have to spend days to withdraw meagre sums.”
The local currency has plunged in value since the civil war erupted in 2011, prior to which the dollar was valued at 50 pounds.
Economist Georges Khouzam explained that foreign exchange vendors – whose work was outlawed under Assad – “deliberately reduced cash flows in Syrian pounds to provoke rapid fluctuations in the market and turn a profit.”
Muntaha Abbas, a 37-year-old civil servant, had to return three times to withdraw her entire salary of 500,000 pounds.
“There are a lot of ATMs in Damascus, but very few of them work,” she said.
After a five-hour wait, she was finally able to withdraw 200,000 pounds.
“Queues and more queues... our lives have become a series of queues,” she lamented.