GAZA CITY: Palestinian group Hamas confirmed on Sunday that Salah Al-Bardawil, a senior member of its political bureau, was killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza the previous day.
Bardawil, 65, was killed along with his wife in a camp in Al-Mawasi, near Khan Yunis, according to the Palestinian Islamist movement.
He is the third member of the political bureau to be killed since Israel resumed air strikes on Tuesday, after Yasser Harb and Essam Al-Dalis, the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military confirmed Sunday that it had targeted Bardawil, saying that “as part of his role, (he) directed the strategic and military planning” of Hamas in Gaza.
His “elimination further degrades Hamas’ military and government capabilities,” it added.
Bardawil, born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, joined Hamas when it was founded in 1987, serving as a spokesman before rising through the ranks and being elected to the political bureau in 2021.
He spoke against security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and supported armed struggle against Israel.
Detained by Israel in 1993 and interrogated for 70 days, according to Hamas, Bardawil was also arrested several times by the security forces of the Palestinian Authority.
In the flare-up since last week, Hamas has also announced the deaths of interior ministry head Mahmud Abu Watfa, and Bahjat Abu Sultan, the director general of the Internal Security Services.
Hamas sources said on Sunday that Mohammed Hassan Al-Amur, the bodyguard of slain leader Yahya Sinwar, was killed in an overnight strike on his home in Khan Yunis.
Hamas has been considerably weakened by the deaths of many of its leaders, both inside and outside the Gaza Strip, since the start of the war triggered by its deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The head of Hamas’s political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran on July 31, 2024, in an explosion claimed by Israel. His successor Sinwar died on October 16 in Gaza.
Hamas says Israeli strike kills political bureau official Salah Al-Bardawil
https://arab.news/6ufmp
Hamas says Israeli strike kills political bureau official Salah Al-Bardawil
- Bardawil, 65, was killed along with his wife in a camp in Al-Mawasi, near Khan Yunis
- He is the third member of the political bureau to be killed since Israel resumed air strikes on Tuesday
Tunisia court frees NGO workers accused of helping migrants
- Mahmoud Daoud Yaacoub, a member of Riahi’s defense team, told AFP that the court had handed down a two-year suspended sentence to the defendants who were in pre-trial detention
TUNIS: A Tunisian court has freed a group of humanitarian workers after handing them suspended sentences for facilitating the “illegal entry and residence” of migrants, a support committee said on Tuesday.
Sherifa Riahi, the former director of the French NGO Terre d’Asile, and several members of her staff had already spent more than 20 months in jail by the time of their final hearing on Monday.
Hours after the hearing, Riahi’s support committee posted a video of her leaving prison overnight, announcing her colleagues had also been freed.
Mahmoud Daoud Yaacoub, a member of Riahi’s defense team, told AFP that the court had handed down a two-year suspended sentence to the defendants who were in pre-trial detention.
“Tomorrow we will learn the rest of the judgment regarding the defendants who are out on bail,” he said.
The NGO employees were accused alongside 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse who were implicated for having lent premises to the organization.
The 23 defendants, who were also charged with “conspiracy with the aim of housing or hiding people who entered clandestinely,” had faced up to 10 years in prison.
Other charges, including ones alleging financial misdeeds, were previously dropped.
The defendants’ lawyers had argued they were simply carrying out humanitarian work under a state-approved program, in coordination with the government.
On the last day of the trial on Monday, a handful of people gathered outside the courthouse in support of the defendants. The final hearing lasted all day and as night fell, the court retired to consider the verdict.
The UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, had on Sunday urged “the authorities to release her (Riahi) instead of trying her on dubious charges related to her defense of migrant rights.”
Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands of people seeking to reach Europe each year.
The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including anti-racism pioneer Saadia Mosbah, whose trial is to start later this month.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied said “hordes of illegal migrants,” many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.
His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.
Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.
This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals on its southern shores, including a 255-million-euro ($290 million) deal with Tunis.
