International

Israel extends control of Gaza’s entire land border

Published

1 month ago

May 30, 2024

Israel extends control of Gaza’s entire land border

Israel’s military has said it has taken control of the strategically important buffer zone along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi Corridor, meaning it now controls Gaza’s entire land border.

A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said about 20 tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle weapons into Gaza had been found within the zone.

Egyptian TV quoted sources denying this, and said Israel was trying to justify its military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The announcement comes during a period of heightened tensions with Egypt.

“In recent days, IDF troops established operational control on the Philadelphi Corridor, on the border between Egypt and Rafah,” IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday.

He described the corridor as a “lifeline” for Hamas, through which the group “regularly smuggled weapons into the Gaza Strip”.

He said troops were “investigating.. and neutralizing” tunnels found in the area.

Mr Hagari later said in a briefing with reporters that he could not be sure that all of the tunnels crossed into Egypt, the New York Times reported.

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The Philadelphi Corridor is a buffer zone, only about 100m (330ft) wide in parts, which runs along the Gaza side of the 13km (8-mile) border with Egypt. Gaza’s only other land border is with Israel itself.

Egypt has previously said it had destroyed cross-border tunnels, making any weapons smuggling impossible.

And a “high-level” Egyptian source, quoted by Al-Qahera News, accused Israel of “using these allegations to justify continuing the operation on the Palestinian city of Rafah and prolonging the war for political purposes”.

Israel has insisted that it must take Rafah to achieve victory in the war triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on the country on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage.

At least 36,170 people have been killed across Gaza since the start of the conflict, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Tensions between Egypt and Israel have heightened since Israeli forces took control of the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing point three weeks ago as part of their offensive against Hamas.

Earlier this week, an Egyptian soldier was killed in an incident involving Egyptian and Israeli troops in the border area near Rafah.

Egypt is a strong supporter of the Palestinians and has condemned Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the killing of thousands of civilians by Israel in the war.

Like Israel, Egypt has maintained a blockade on its border with Gaza since Hamas came to power in 2006. Hamas is an off-shoot of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organisation, which is banned as a terrorist group in Egypt.

Egypt has, however, kept channels open with Hamas and has been acting as a mediator in on-off indirect talks between Israel and the group to try to reach a ceasefire deal and release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Israel extends control of Gaza’s entire land border

International

Saudi Arabia, Jordan airdrop food aid to Gaza

Published

13 hours ago

July 7, 2024

Trends Admin

KSrelief chief Abdullah Al-Rabeeah says 30 tonnes of ready to eat food had been parachute-dropped by the Jordanian air force into Gaza. (SPA)

Saudi Arabia, Jordan airdrop food aid to Gaza

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia and Jordan had airdropped 30 tonnes of ready-to-eat food for besieged Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief) said early Sunday.

In a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), KSrelief said the airdrop was carried out with the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO) and the Jordanian Hashemite Armed Forces.

The food supplies dropped by air are suitable for immediate consumption without the need for heating, Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah, KSrelief director general, said in the statement.

KSrelief and other aid agencies had been resorting to parachute drops of food aid to Gaza to bypass the closure of border crossings by the Israeli occupation forces, which had previously prevented the entry of humanitarian aid to the affected people in the Strip.

Al-Rabeeah called for the opening of border crossings, noting that delivery through airdrops were not sustainable considering the massive number of people in need of humanitarian assistance.

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He said KSrelief’s campaign for Palestinians to date has collected financial sums exceeding $184 million. The Kingdom also operated an air bridge consisting of 54 planes and a sea bridge consisting of eight ships still operating.

The US military had also built a temporary sea port in Gaza for the delivery of humanitarian aid, but even that had been rendered unstable by stormy seas.

More than 2 million Palestinians had been displaced in Gaza since Israel launched a full-scale war in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages, according to official Israeli figures.

The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 38,000 Palestinians, per the latest count of Gaza health officials.

Extensive damage to Gaza’s infrastructure has precipitated a healthcare crisis, with an increase in communicable diseases, especially among children, and brought the entire educational system in Gaza to a standstill, according to the United Nations.

Saudi Arabia, Jordan airdrop food aid to Gaza

ARAB NEWS

International

16 killed during Israeli attack on UN school in Gaza

Published

13 hours ago

July 7, 2024

Trends Admin

Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli attack on a UN school sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, July 6 [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]

16 killed during Israeli attack on UN school in Gaza

At least 16 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli attack on a United Nations-run school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip, the Gaza Government Media Office said, as Israel continues to pound the besieged coastal territory.

In a statement on Saturday, the Government Media Office said more than 75 people also were injured in the attack on al-Jaouni school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.

“We condemn the Israeli occupation [for] committing these ongoing crimes and massacres against civilians, children and women,” it said.

The Nuseirat facility, run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), is the latest school to be bombed by the Israeli military since the Gaza war began in early October.

At least 38,098 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since October 7 and the besieged enclave faces dire shortages of food, water, medicine and other humanitarian supplies.

On Saturday, dozens of Palestinians, including five journalists, were killed as the Israeli military stepped up its bombardment of the territory.

Videos taken at the scene of the attack on the UNRWA school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat showed twisted metal at the collapsed building. A young boy could be seen sifting through pools of blood on the ground.

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International

Five journalists killed in latest Israeli bombardment of Gaza

Published

13 hours ago

July 7, 2024

Trends Admin

Five journalists killed in latest Israeli bombardment of Gaza

At least five journalists were killed in attacks by Israeli forces in the last 24 hours in Gaza following intense bombings and air strikes across the besieged enclave.

On Saturday, Gaza’s Government Media Office said separate Israeli strikes killed three journalists in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the territory and two in Gaza City.

This implies that at least 158 media workers have been killed since the current war erupted on October 7.

Those killed in Nuseirat were identified as Amjad Jahjouh and Rizq Abu Ashkian, both from the Palestine Media Agency, and Wafa Abu Dabaan from the Islamic University Radio in Gaza.

Abu Dabaan was married to Jahjouh. Their children were also killed during the strike, according to Al Jazeera’s team on the ground. At least 10 people were killed in that attack on Nuseirat.

Palestinian journalists Saadi Madoukh and Ahmed Sukkar were killed on Friday following an Israeli raid that targeted a home of the Madoukh family in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Before the latest deadly attacks, Israel’s war on Gaza was already considered the deadliest conflict for journalists and media workers in the world.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which has a separate database on Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, put the number of media workers killed as of July 5 at 108 since the war began, also making it the deadliest period since the group began gathering data in 1992.

Al Jazeera journalist, Hamza Dahdouh, the eldest son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, was among those killed by an Israeli missile strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, in January.

Hamza was in a vehicle near al-Mawasi, an Israel-designated “safe zone” that its forces have repeatedly attacked. He was with another journalist, Mustafa Thuraya, who was also killed in the attack.

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An earlier Israeli attack had wounded Wael and killed his cameraperson Samer Abudaqa during a reporting assignment in southern Gaza in December.

The Guardian newspaper reported in June that at least 23 members of the Al-Aqsa network, a media channel linked to Hamas, were killed by Israeli strikes since October.

Death toll tops 38,000

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Saturday that 87 people were killed across the enclave over the last 48 hours, including the five journalists, bringing to at least 38,098 the number of people killed in the last nine months.

More than 87,700 people have been injured in Israel’s military offensive during the same period, the ministry said.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud noted the “surge in air attacks across the central area, the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and also in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood in the north”.

In eastern Khan Younis and Rafah city, at the southern edge of the Strip, bodies were being taken out of the hospital morgue for burials.

“It’s a scene that we’ve been seeing over and over for the past nine months, crying parents over the bodies of their children,” Mahmoud said. “It’s heartbreaking and it’s becoming the daily norm for people here.”

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Among the victims in the recent assaults was a worker for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after an Israeli strike hit the organisation’s warehouses north of the Maghazi camp in central Gaza, according to Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency Sanad.

Another person was also killed in that attack on the UNRWA facilities.

Video footage verified by Sanad showed the arrival of their bodies, as well as those injured, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.

The UNRWA employee was wearing his jacket clearly identifying him as UN staff while working in the agency’s warehouses.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Information Center reported on Saturday at least six policemen were killed in an Israeli bombardment that hit their car in the Saudi neighbourhood of western Rafah.

One person was also killed as a result of an Israeli bombing of a police car in Gaza’s al-Shakoush area, northwest of Rafah.