Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief raises millions with earthquake appeal for Turkiye and Syria

Special Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief raises millions with earthquake appeal for Turkiye and Syria
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A person is rescued from the rubble in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Adiyaman's Yeni Mahalle neighborhood in Turkiye on Feb. 8, 2023. (IHH/Handout via REUTERS)
Special Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief raises millions with earthquake appeal for Turkiye and Syria
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Buildings destroyed by the February 6 Turkiye-Syria earthquake are seen in Antakya, southern Turkiye, on Feb. 8. (AP Photo)
Special Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief raises millions with earthquake appeal for Turkiye and Syria
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A man reacts after rescue teams found his father dead under a collapsed building, in Kahramanmaras, southern Turkey, on Feb. 8, 2023. (AP Photo)
Special Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief raises millions with earthquake appeal for Turkiye and Syria
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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan meets with people in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkiye, on February 8, 2023. (AFP)
Special Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief raises millions with earthquake appeal for Turkiye and Syria
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Earthquake victims receive treatment in the state hospital of Adiyaman, Turkiye, on Feb. 8, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 09 February 2023
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Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief raises millions with earthquake appeal for Turkiye and Syria

Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief raises millions with earthquake appeal for Turkiye and Syria
  • A magnitude 7.8 quake struck in the early hours of Monday, sparking an international humanitarian response 
  • King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman directed KSrelief to establish aid delivery flights 

RIYADH/QAMISHLI: Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, also known as KSrelief, has launched a fundraising campaign through the “Sahem” platform to help those affected by the massive earthquake in Syria and Turkiye, the center announced on Wednesday.

Even before KSrelief announced its official fundraiser, Saudi donations to the aid effort had already exceeded SR13 million ($3.5 million), Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Rabeeah, KSrelief’s supervisor general, told Arab News.




KSrelief chief Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah (R) and Sheikh Saad Al-Shathri, a member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, leading the launch of the Kingdom's aid campaign for victims of the Turkiye-Syria earthquake. (Twitter: @KSrelief)

As of Wednesday night, hundreds of thousands of donors had contributed approximately SR65.9 million.

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck parts of southeastern Turkiye, northwestern Syria and neighboring areas in the early hours of Monday, followed by a magnitude 7.5 quake hours later. More than 11,000 people are known to have died and tens of thousands have been injured.

In the two days since the catastrophe, aid workers have struggled to reach remote parts of both countries. In many areas, rescuers have been digging through rubble with their bare hands in the fading hope of finding more survivors.

“Until now, not one gram of aid has arrived here,” Roj Mousa, a journalist from northern Syrian city of Afrin, told Arab News.

According to the International Rescue Committee, Turkiye’s Bab Al-Hawa, the only border crossing through which UN humanitarian aid is allowed into northern Syria, has been closed as a result of damage sustained in the earthquake. As the bulk of the aid entering Syria must pass through Damascus, which strictly controls its distribution to governorates, the closure of Bab Al-Hawa has made it even harder to deliver adequate and timely aid to the hardest-hit areas.




Earthquake victims are rushed to the emergency ward of the Bab al-Hawa hospital in Syria's Idlib province on the border with Turkey early on Feb. 6, 2023. (AFP)

“We are trying to buy some food, water, blankets, tents and other aid and send it to (the people in Afrin),” said Mousa. “They are all sleeping outside, not inside buildings. The main problem now is that after a week, when the rubble is cleared, they must rebuild. In Jinderis, the second-largest city in the Afrin region, 90 percent of people are sleeping in the bush.”

Mousa estimates that between 800 and 900 people lost their lives in Jinderis alone. To the south, in rebel-held Idlib, the situation is not much better.

“There are many people still trapped under buildings. We are in need of all types of aid,” Mohammed Yazji, a journalist from Idlib, told Arab News.

According to Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, more than 1,500 people were killed and at least 4,200 injured in Idlib, and the toll is expected to rise.




Syrian rescuers (White Helmets) search for casualties in the rubble of a building destroyed by an earthquake in Syria's Idlib province on the border with Turkey early on February 6, 2023. (AFP)

“We have been displaced to Iwaa Camp,” said Yazji. “Only local NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) have provided aid so far. No international aid organizations have helped us.

“We wish international rescue teams would come because the situation here is very difficult and we are working properly but the load is more than we can handle.”

The World Health Organization said rescuers face a race against time not only to save lives but to ensure the injured survive in dire circumstances.

Robert Holden, the WHO’s earthquake-response incident manager, said the immediate focus was on saving lives but it is also “imperative to make sure that those who survived the initial disaster … continue to survive.”

Speaking during a press conference in Geneva, he said: “We’ve got a lot of people who have survived now out in the open, in worsening and horrific conditions,” adding that access to clean water, fuel, electricity and communications has been disrupted.




People warm up with fire in front of destroyed buildings in Antakya, southern Turkey, on Feb. 8, 2023. (AP)

“We are in real danger of seeing a secondary disaster which may cause harm to more people than the initial disaster if we don’t move with the same pace and intensity as we are doing on the search and rescue,” he warned. “This is no easy task … The scale of the operation is massive.”

Several countries have pledged aid to Turkiye and Syria. Croatia, Poland, Switzerland, India, the UK and Greece have sent rescue teams, search dogs, and firefighters to Turkiye to aid the rescue efforts.

The US is sending assistance to Turkiye and working with humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to Syria. Even Lebanon, which is grappling with its own protracted economic crisis, has sent soldiers and first responders to Turkiye. Jordan is sending aid to both Turkiye and Syria, while New Zealand and China’s Red Cross are providing the Syrian Arab Red Crescent with humanitarian and financial assistance.




A woman sits on the rubble as emergency rescue teams search for people under the remains of destroyed buildings in Nurdagi town on the outskirts of Osmaniye city southern Turkey, on Feb. 7, 2023. (AP)

Saudi Arabia has also stepped up to fill aid gaps and deliver life-saving humanitarian assistance to both countries.

Al-Rabeeah, KSrelief’s general supervisor, told Arab News: “We launched the national donation campaign and we appeal to donors, male and female, businessmen and individuals, to contribute effectively to alleviating the suffering of those affected by the earthquake in Syria and Turkiye.

“I say to every donor, every riyal that is donated will have an impact on alleviating (the suffering of) an injured person, either a wounded or a broken person, or a person (in need of) rescue.

 

 

“We are counting on this aid and this support and donations to implement very important programs that will save the lives of hundreds or thousands of people and, God willing, it will return with goodness, blessing and reward for everyone who contributes and donates.”

Donations can be made through the Sahem platform or through the various channels offered on the KSrelief website. Donations through Sahem are exclusively accepted as monetary funds, and KSrelief deducts no administrative fees, so 100 percent of donations go to beneficiaries.

KSrelief has already started to secure food parcels to send to those in need. On Tuesday, King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman directed the organization to establish an aid corridor to deliver health, shelter, food and logistical supplies to Syria and Turkiye.




KSrelief has also teams of medics with vast experience serving refugees from Syria and Yemen over the past few years. (SPA file photo)

King Salman also ordered the deployment of rapid intervention teams and emergency medical aid, as well as a Saudi volunteer delegation.

“We cannot help but thank the teams that contributed to this noble work, especially the field teams, whether from the General Directorate of Civil Defense in the Ministry of Interior, or from the Saudi Red Crescent Authority, or the experienced cadres of KSrelief, or the volunteers who took the initiative to register with the center to provide urgent medical and health services,” Al-Rabeeah told Arab News.

Saad bin Nasser Al-Shathri, an advisor to the Royal Court and a member of the Council of Senior Scholars and the permanent committee of Ifta, praised the Sahem campaign for its efforts to help meet the massive humanitarian needs in Syria and Turkiye, and reiterated that previous Saudi fundraisers helped many peoples and countries in crisis.

 

 

Since it was founded in 2015, KSrelief has aided struggling communities and nations around the globe, including Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The latest fundraising campaign is an extension of its earlier work in support of the Syrian people.

In December last year, KSrelief provided $6 million to Syrian refugees living in camps in Jordan, through the UN’s World Food Program, which helped meet the food needs of more than 50,000 Syrians.

“The Saudi humanitarian efforts are not associated with any political affairs or any political, religious or military agendas, as was made clear by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in the center’s opening speech,” said Al-Rabeeah.

“The center has continued to support the people of Syria in alleviating the suffering of Syrian communities, without ties to any specific agendas. Our concern is with the injured, regardless of any political ties.”

Saudi humanitarian aid has long transcended political barriers. In October last year, the Kingdom announced a $400 million humanitarian aid package for Ukraine, while calling for a peaceful resolution to the conflict there, which has been raging since the Russian invasion a year ago.




A Saudia cargo plane unloads food and shelter aid at Sudan's Khartoum airport as part of a humanitarian air bridge from Saudi Arabia for flooding victims in the north African country in August 2022. (SPA file photo)

KSrelief has played a leading role in international aid initiatives during past disasters, most significantly for the people of Lebanon in the wake of the Aug. 4, 2020, Beirut port explosion that killed more than 215 people, injured more than 6,500 and displaced about 300,000. The Kingdom sent two aircraft carrying 120 tons of medical and emergency supplies.

KSrelief also recently sent two flights to Sudan carrying food and shelter aid for those affected by last year’s floods. It also aided India’s COVID-19 response by sending an additional 60 tons of oxygen, adding to an initial 80-ton delivery to the South Asian nation.

In a telephone call on Wednesday with Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, Hussein Ibrahim Taha, the secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, offered his condolences on behalf of the organization and its member states, and expressed his sympathy for the victims.

Donations for the Turkiye and Syria earthquake relief effort can be made through the Sahem platform using the following link: sahem.ksrelief.org/SYTR, or by direct transfer to the campaign’s bank account.

 


Jordan says it will host conference to coordinate aid to Gaza

Jordan says it will host conference to coordinate aid to Gaza
Updated 30 November 2023
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Jordan says it will host conference to coordinate aid to Gaza

Jordan says it will host conference to coordinate aid to Gaza
  • Officials say the king will call on participants to push Israel to end its siege of the enclave and allow unimpeded flow of goods by opening additional border crossings

AMMAN: Jordan on Thursday will host an international conference attended by the main UN bodies and regional and international relief agencies to coordinate humanitarian aid to war-devastated Gaza, official media said.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths and key UN bodies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in ramping up aid to Gaza will be present at the conference, along with representatives of Western and Arab countries involved in the aid effort, they said.
The conference, to be held behind closed doors, will be addressed by King Abdullah who has been lobbying Western leaders to back a UN resolution that calls for an immediate cease-fire.
A four-day truce that was extended two days has brought the first respite in the bombardment of Gaza, with much of the northern part of the coastal territory of 2.3 million inhabitants having been reduced to rubble.
The monarch has accused Israel of committing war crimes with a relentless bombing campaign that has killed at least 15,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities, and a siege of the enclave that prevented for weeks the entry of medicine, food and fuel and cut electricity supplies.
The Israeli actions were in response to an Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel by Hamas militants, who killed some 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages back to Gaza.
Officials say the king will call on participants to push Israel to end its siege of the enclave and allow unimpeded flow of goods by opening additional border crossings.
UN officials said they were already urging Israel to reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing that had been used to carry more than 60 percent of truckloads going into Gaza before the current conflict.
Currently, most trucks carrying aid through Rafah — the only open entry point into Gaza — has to first go through Israeli inspections at the Nitzana crossing, to ensure that neither fuel nor dual usage goods are allowed.
The inspection system has delayed desperately needed aid, aid workers say.
Jordan Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, in an address to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, urged the world body to adopt a resolution to end to the war, saying the Security Council’s “silence was giving Israel a cover for its crimes.”
“The only path to security and peace was the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land,” he said.


Israeli military says 10 Israelis, four Thai nationals, have been released by Hamas

Israeli military says 10 Israelis, four Thai nationals, have been released by Hamas
Updated 30 November 2023
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Israeli military says 10 Israelis, four Thai nationals, have been released by Hamas

Israeli military says 10 Israelis, four Thai nationals, have been released by Hamas
  • International pressure has mounted for the cease-fire to continue as long as possible after nearly eight weeks of Israeli bombardment and a ground campaign in Gaza

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said 10 Israelis and four Thai nationals were released late Wednesday from captivity in the Gaza Strip.
The hostages crossed into Egypt and were to be transferred to Israel.
It was the sixth such release under a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Israel is to release 30 Palestinian prisoners later Wednesday.
The cease-fire is set to expire early Thursday. International mediators are trying to extend the deal to facilitate the release of additional hostages held by Hamas.
The militant group captured some 240 people in an Oct. 7 cross-border attack that triggered the war. Some 150 people are believed to remain in captivity.
A new swap of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israel got underway late Wednesday in the final hours of the current Gaza truce as international mediators raced to extend the halt of Israel’s air and ground offensive to allow further exchanges.
The Israeli military said a group of 10 Israeli women and children and four Thai nationals had been handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza and were heading to exit the territory. Earlier, two Russian-Israeli women were freed by Hamas in a separate release. Israel was set to free 30 Palestinian prisoners in return.
Negotiators were working down to the wire to hammer out details for a further extension of the truce beyond its deadline of early Thursday. The talks appear to be growing tougher as most of the women and children held by Hamas are freed, and the militants are expected to seek greater releases in return for freeing men and soldiers.
International pressure has mounted for the cease-fire to continue as long as possible after nearly eight weeks of Israeli bombardment and a ground campaign in Gaza that has killed thousands of Palestinians, uprooted three quarters of the population of 2.3 million and led to a humanitarian crisis. Israel has welcomed the release of dozens of hostages in recent days and says it will maintain the truce if Hamas keeps freeing captives.
Still, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored on Wednesday that Israel will resume its campaign to eliminate Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for 16 years and orchestrated the deadly attack on Israel that triggered the war
“After this phase of returning our abductees is exhausted, will Israel return to fighting? So my answer is an unequivocal yes,” he said. “There is no way we are not going back to fighting until the end.”
He spoke ahead of a visit to the region planned this week by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to press for further extensions of the truce and hostage releases.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops killed two Palestinian boys — an 8-year-old an a 15-year-old — during a raid on the town of Jenin, Palestinian health officials said. Security footage showed a group of boys in the street who start to run, except for one who falls to the ground, bleeding.
The Israeli military said its troops fired on people who threw explosives at them but did not specify it was referring to the boys, who are not seen throwing anything. Separately, the military said its troops killed two Islamic Jihad militants during the raid.
So far, the Israeli onslaught in Gaza seems to have had little effect on Hamas’ rule, evidenced by its ability to conduct complex negotiations, enforce the cease-fire among other armed groups, and orchestrate the release of hostages. Hamas leaders, including Yehya Sinwar, have likely relocated to the south.
With Israeli troops holding much of northern Gaza, a ground invasion south will likely bring an escalating cost in Palestinian lives and destruction.
Most of Gaza’s population is now crammed into the south. The truce has brought them relief from bombardment, but the days of calm have been taken up in a frenzied rush to obtain supplies to feed their families as aid enters in greater, but still insufficient, amounts.
United States, Israel’s main ally, has shown greater reticence over the impact of the war in Gaza. The Biden administration has told Israel that if it launches an offensive in the south, it must operate with far greater precision.
ISRAEL’S HOSTAGE DILEMMA
The plight of the captives and shock from the Oct. 7 attack have galvanized Israeli support for the war. But Netanyahu is under pressure to bring the hostages home and could find it difficult to resume the offensive if there’s a prospect for more releases.
Since the initial truce began on Friday, both sides have been releasing women and children in their exchanges. After Friday’s releases, Gaza militants still hold around 20 women, accordding to Israeli officials. IF the truce continues at the current rate, they would be out in a few days.
After that, keeping the truce going depends on tougher negotiations over the release of around 126 men Israel says are held captive – including several dozen soldiers.
For men — and especially soldiers — Hamas is expected to push for comparable releases of Palestinian men or prominent detainees, a deal Israel may resist.
An Israeli official involved in hostage negotiations said talks on a further extension for release of civilian males and soldiers were still preliminary, and a deal would not be considered until all the women and children are out. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations were ongoing.
With Wednesday’s releases, a total of 73 Israelis, including dual nationals, have been freed during the six-day truce, most of whom appear physically well but shaken. Another 24 hostages — 23 Thais and one Filipino — have also been released. Before the cease-fire, Hamas released four hostages, and the Israeli army rescued one. Two others were found dead in Gaza.
So far, most of the 180 Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons have been teenagers accused of throwing stones and firebombs during confrontations with Israeli forces. Several were women convicted by Israeli military courts of attempting to attack soldiers.
Palestinians have celebrated the release of people they see as having resisted Israel’s decades-long military occupation of lands they want for a future state.
The war began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, in which it killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The militants kidnapped some 240 people back into Gaza, including babies, children, women, soldiers, older adults and Thai farm laborers.
Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion in Gaza have killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The toll is likely much higher, as officials have only sporadically updated the count since Nov. 11 due to the breakdown of services in the north. The ministry says thousands more people are missing and feared dead under the rubble.
Israel says 77 of its soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive. It claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence.
TENSE CALM IN GAZA
For Palestinians in Gaza, the truce’s calm has been overwhelmed by the search for aid and by horror as they see the extent of destruction.
In the north, residents described entire residential blocks leveled to the ground in Gaza City and surrounding areas. The smell of decomposing bodies trapped under collapsed buildings fills the air, said Mohmmed Mattar, a 29-year-old resident of Gaza City who along with other volunteers searches for the dead under rubble or left in the streets.
They have found and buried 46 so far during the truce, he said. Most were unidentified. More bodies remain inside rubble but can’t be reached without heavy equipment, or are left on streets that are unapproachable because of Israeli troops nearby, Mattar said.
In the south, the truce has allowed more aid to be delivered from Egypt, up to 200 trucks a day. But aid officials say it is not enough, given that most now depend on outside aid. Overwhelmed UN-run shelters house more than 1 million displaced people, with many sleeping outside in cold, rainy weather.
At a distribution center in Rafah, large crowds line daily up for newly arrived bags of flour. But supplies run out quickly before many can get their share.
“We’ve been searching for bread for our children,” said one woman in line, Nawal Abu Namous. “Every day, we come here … we spend money on transportation to get here, just to go home with nothing.”
Some markets and shops have reopened, but prices for the few items in stock have skyrocketed. Winter clothes are unavailable. One clothes shop owner in Deir Al-Balah told The Associated Press that he hates opening his doors in the morning, knowing he’ll spend most of the day apologizing to customers for not having winter items.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said some 111,000 people have respiratory infections and 75,000 have diarrhea, more than half of them under 5 years old. “More people could die from disease than bombings.”
“We are fed up,” said Omar Al-Darawi, who works at the overwhelmed Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza. “We want this war to stop.”


Hamas set to free more hostages as Gaza truce expiry looms

Hamas set to free more hostages as Gaza truce expiry looms
Updated 30 November 2023
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Hamas set to free more hostages as Gaza truce expiry looms

Hamas set to free more hostages as Gaza truce expiry looms
  • The cessation of hostilities is scheduled to end early Thursday after a six-day halt in a conflict sparked by deadly Hamas attacks that prompted a devastating Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Hamas was expected to free more hostages Wednesday in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, as mediators raced to broker another extension to a Gaza truce hours before it was due to expire.
The cessation of hostilities is scheduled to end early Thursday after a six-day halt in a conflict sparked by deadly Hamas attacks that prompted a devastating Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Underlining the sense of urgency, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due to make his third wartime visit to the Middle East as part of efforts to prolong the pause in fighting.
In a sign of the challenges facing negotiators, a Hamas source said the Palestinian militant group was not satisfied with Israel’s proposals for another extension.
“What is being proposed in the discussions to extend the truce is not the best,” the source told AFP, adding that the talks were focused on extending the pause by “two days or more.”
Israel’s war cabinet was meeting late Wednesday over proposals to extend the truce, media reports said.
Another source close to the Palestinian militant group said Hamas’s armed wing had handed over another group of Israeli hostages to the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
The source did not say how many hostages were involved in the latest exchange and there was no immediate confirmation from Israel that the group was free.
It would be the sixth group released under the truce agreement brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
Hamas also said it had freed two women hostages with Russian citizenship.
Their release was outside the scope of the Israel-Hamas agreement, in what the Palestinian group described as recognition of the “efforts” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The truce deal has brought a temporary halt to fighting that began on October 7 when Hamas militants poured over the border into Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 240, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel’s subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 15,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas officials, and reduced large parts of the north of the territory to rubble.
As efforts intensified to extend the pause in fighting, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded a “true humanitarian cease-fire.”
Gazans are “in the midst of an epic humanitarian catastrophe,” Guterres told a UN Security Council meeting, after seven weeks of bombing that have left buildings levelled and inhabitants short of food and water.
So far 60 Israeli hostages and 180 Palestinian prisoners have been released under the truce agreement to the joy of their relatives.
Hamas has also released more than 20 other hostages outside the scope of the truce agreement, mostly Thais.
Complicating matters, some of the remaining hostages in Gaza are in the hands of another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad.
Its spokesman Musab Al-Breim told AFP on Tuesday that “the war is now continuing in indirect negotiations with the Israeli occupier.”
He said his group and Hamas were “committed” to respecting the truce agreement “as long as the occupier does so, and we are ready to pursue a political route to make the occupier pay.”
Alongside emotional reunions, there were also saw fresh reminders of the tragic stakes of the conflict.
Israel’s army said it was investigating a report by Hamas’s armed wing that a 10-month-old baby hostage, his four-year-old brother and their mother had all been killed in an Israeli bombing in Gaza.
The military was “assessing the accuracy of the information,” it said in a statement.
“Hamas is wholly responsible for the security of all hostages in the Gaza Strip,” it added. “Hamas’ actions continue to endanger the hostages, which include nine children.”
With tensions high despite the truce, the Palestinian health ministry in the occupied West Bank said the Israeli army shot and killed an eight-year-old boy and a teenager in the territory on Wednesday.
The military said troops had “responded with live fire” after explosive devices had been hurled at them.
After the pause in hostilities entered its sixth day, a source close to Hamas told AFP on condition of anonymity the militant group “informed the mediators that it is willing to extend the truce for four days.”
Under that arrangement, “the movement would be able to release Israeli prisoners that it, other resistance movements and other parties hold during this period, according to the terms of the existing truce,” the source added.
Speaking after a NATO meeting in Brussels, Blinken said he would be “focused on doing what we can to extend the pause so that we continue to get more hostages out and more humanitarian assistance in.”
The World Food Programme has warned that Gaza’s population faces a “high risk of famine if WFP is not able to provide continued access to food.”
Conditions in the territory were “catastrophic,” the agency’s Middle East director Corinne Fleischer said.
The spokesman for the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, Ashraf Al-Qudra, told AFP Wednesday that doctors found five premature babies dead in Gaza City’s Al-Nasr hospital.
An estimated 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes so far, more than half the territory’s population, according to the United Nations.
“I discovered that my house had been completely destroyed — 27 years of my life to build it and everything is gone!” said Taghrid Al-Najjar, 46, after returning to her home in southeastern Gaza.
Israel has made clear it sees the truce as an interlude to ensure hostage releases before its war to destroy Hamas continues.
Blinken said he believed an extension was in Israel’s interest.
“They’re also intensely focused on bringing their people home, so we’re working on that,” he said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the Security Council that any resumption of fighting threatened to “turn into a calamity that devours the whole region.”


Cart ride shows scale of massive destruction in Gaza’s Khan Younis

Cart ride shows scale of massive destruction in Gaza’s Khan Younis
Updated 29 November 2023
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Cart ride shows scale of massive destruction in Gaza’s Khan Younis

Cart ride shows scale of massive destruction in Gaza’s Khan Younis
  • 8-year-old, teen shot dead in West Bank
  • Erdogan calls Netanyahu ‘butcher of Gaza’

GAZA STRIP/RAMALLAH: Swerving to avoid a crater left in the road by a strike, a donkey trots along the debris-strewn streets of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, then slows to navigate a narrow passageway cleared through the rubble of destroyed apartment blocks.

With a dearth of fuel caused by Israel’s blockade of Gaza since the start of its war against Hamas, donkey carts have become an essential mode of transport for people and goods in the bombarded Palestinian territory.

A reporter crew traveled with Mohammed Al-Najar, whose home in Khan Younis was destroyed by an airstrike and who is now living with his family in a school in Khuza’a, about 8 km away on the eastern outskirts of town.

“It’s hard to move so we use donkey carts. Unfortunately it takes us three to four hours to reach Khan Younis,” said Najar, speaking on the back of the cart.

The slower pace gives a clear view of a city scarred by war, with the white donkey trotting past one scene of destruction after another.

Some buildings had been destroyed, reduced to grey piles of broken concrete and metal rods, the only traces of color from bits of clothing and possessions strewn amid the chaos.

Others were damaged to different degrees — a pockmarked facade, a hole in a wall, missing windows. One was an empty shell, standing thanks to supporting pillars but with no walls.

Sheets of corrugated iron lay on the ground, bent at strange angles, and piles of rubbish and debris were everywhere.

There were hardly any motor vehicles on the road, just the odd scooter. Bicycles were more common, as well as other donkey carts. Mostly, people were on foot. Two men carried a cooking gas cylinder, sharing the weight between them.

At several locations, buildings on both sides of the road had been flattened, and people had cleared passageways just wide enough for one car to pass. The cart passed the burnt-out carcass of a car marooned in chunks of concrete.

The destruction in Khan Younis in the south is not as extreme as in Gaza City and other parts of northern Gaza that have borne the brunt of Israel’s military campaign. Drone footage from the north shows large areas have been blasted into moonscapes.

Meanwhile, an eight-year-old boy and a teenager were killed by the Israeli army on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The ministry said in a statement that “Adam Al-Ghul, eight years old, and Bassem Abu El-Wafa, 15 years old, were killed by bullets from the occupier.”

CCTV footage circulating online and on television news shows a boy being struck by a bullet and falling in the street, sending other children fleeing.

Other images show a teenager also being hit by a bullet and falling, then appearing to call for help as more shots hit the ground around him and other people run for cover.

The teenager can be seen struggling on the ground in apparent agony for at least half a minute.

In other news, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the butcher of Gaza” and accused him of spawning anti-Semitism across the world.

“Netanyahu has already written his name in history as the butcher of Gaza,” Erdogan said in nationally televised remarks.

“Netanyahu is endangering the security of all Jews in the world by supporting anti-Semitism with the murders he committed in Gaza.”

Erdogan said: “Statements made by the Netanyahu administration diminish our hopes for the humanitarian pause to be transformed into a lasting ceasefire.”

Separately, Oslo’s city hall on Wednesday raised the Palestinian flag in a show of solidarity with the people of Gaza.

The initiative coincides with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, celebrated since 1978 following the adoption of a resolution by the UN General Assembly.

“When we know that more than 5,000 children have lost their lives, equivalent to more than 275 school classes, it is only natural to remember them today” Oslo Mayor Anne Lindboe said on the sidelines of the event, which brought together pro-Palestinian activists.


Israel says investigating Hamas report of baby hostage death

Israel says investigating Hamas report of baby hostage death
Updated 29 November 2023
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Israel says investigating Hamas report of baby hostage death

Israel says investigating Hamas report of baby hostage death
  • The military was “assessing the accuracy of the information”
  • Hamas official and former Gaza health minister Bassem Naim said later Wednesday at a press conference in Cape Town that the three family members were dead

JERUSALEM: Israel’s army said Wednesday it was investigating a report by Hamas’s armed wing that a 10-month-old baby hostage, his four-year-old brother and their mother had all been killed in Gaza.
The military was “assessing the accuracy of the information,” it said in a statement.
“Hamas is wholly responsible for the security of all hostages in the Gaza Strip,” it added. “Hamas’s actions continue to endanger the hostages, which include nine children.”
The Bibas family are among the highest-profile hostages seized in the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7, due to the age of baby Kfir.
The statement from the Israeli military came after the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced that Kfir, his brother Ariel and their mother Shiri had been killed in an Israeli bombing in Gaza before the current pause in fighting went into effect.
It made no mention of the boys’ father Yarden.
Hamas official and former Gaza health minister Bassem Naim said later Wednesday at a press conference in Cape Town that the three family members were dead.
“We have confirmed two to three weeks ago that 60 Israelis have been killed under Israeli bombardment and are still under the rubble,” Naim said.
“The woman and her two children are among them, I can confirm that.”
So far, there has been no verification of Hamas’s tally of Israeli hostages killed.
A statement released on behalf of relatives by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said they could only wait for further information.
“Our family has learned of Hamas’s latest claims. We are waiting for the information to be confirmed and hopefully refuted by military officials,” they said.
Images of the baby’s kidnapping from Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel have become one of the symbols of the deadly assault.
The images showed the mother, her face contorted with anguish, holding her two little red-headed boys wrapped in a blanket against her.
Their father was also seen in photographs with his head covered in blood being taken by armed Hamas militants toward the Gaza Strip.
The family were being held by a Palestinian faction other than Hamas, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a briefing a few days ago.
Yarden’s sister Ofri Bibas Levy told AFP at a demonstration in Tel Aviv on Tuesday the family’s fate was “directly in the hands of Hamas.”
“Hamas took them and Hamas is required to bring them back now,” she said.
Dana Siton, Shiri’s sister, added that their lives were in “immediate danger... each passing day endangers them.”
Nutritionists interviewed in Israeli media have highlighted the risks of captivity for a baby of 10 months, an age when children are in the process of adapting to solid food.
In one previous case, Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group allied with Hamas, has announced the death of a hostage who was later released alive.