Heavy fighting rocks Gaza as thousands on the move again

Palestinians react, following an Israeli strike near a UN-run school sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip on July 3, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians react, following an Israeli strike near a UN-run school sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip on July 3, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 03 July 2024
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Heavy fighting rocks Gaza as thousands on the move again

Palestinians react, following an Israeli strike near a UN-run school sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis.
  • Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shujaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US media report saying his generals were urging a Gaza truce even with Hamas undefeated

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe in the territory’s south.
Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shujaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, said AFP reporters.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US media report saying his generals were urging a Gaza truce even with Hamas undefeated, stressing on Tuesday that “this will not happen.”
Military chief Herzi Halevi meanwhile said Israel is engaged in “a long campaign” to destroy Hamas over the October 7 attack and to bring home the hostages held by Palestinian militants.
The United Nations warned that the almost nine-months-old war had “unleashed a maelstrom of human misery” and that the latest evacuation order had plunged yet more Palestinians into “an abyss of suffering.”
Ten days after Netanyahu said the war’s “intense phase” was winding down, the Israeli military again rained down air strikes and artillery fire on militants in the Shujaiya district.
The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists,” located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the military said.
The Israeli army — which issued an evacuation order for Shujaiya a week ago — on Sunday did the same for a larger area near Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south, raising fears of renewed heavy battles there.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road there, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere in the bombed-out wasteland.
The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 250,000 people had been impacted by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the order covers 117 square kilometers (45 square miles), or “about a third of the Gaza Strip, making it the largest such order since October.”
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80 percent of Gaza’s population.
She also said not enough aid was reaching the besieged territory and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.
“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”
Amid the war, siege and mass displacement, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions, said the World Health Organization.
Wafaa Elwan, a Palestinian mother of seven who now lives in a tent city by the sea, said: “We sleep on the ground, on sand where worms come out underneath us.”
She said her five-year-old son, much of whose body was covered in rashes and welts, “can’t sleep through the night because he can’t stop scratching his body.”
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive since then has killed at least 37,925 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that “operational activities continue throughout the Gaza Strip.”
The Gaza civil defense agency said seven people were killed when a strike hit a family house north of Gaza City.
Another strike killed three people in a car at Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Deir Al-Balah area, said an AFP reporter.
Air strikes also hit homes in Rafah, according to Gaza’s government media office.
The New York Times has quoted Israeli security officials as saying top generals see a truce as the best way to secure the release of the remaining hostages, even if that meant not achieving all of the war goals.
Netanyahu, who heads a government including hard-line right-wing parties, strongly rejected this on Tuesday and vowed Israel would not give in to the “winds of defeatism.”
“The war will end once Israel achieves all of its objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all of our hostages,” he said.


Lacking aid, Syrians do what they can to rebuild devastated Aleppo

Lacking aid, Syrians do what they can to rebuild devastated Aleppo
Updated 29 April 2025
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Lacking aid, Syrians do what they can to rebuild devastated Aleppo

Lacking aid, Syrians do what they can to rebuild devastated Aleppo
  • Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city and a UNESCO World Heritage site, was deeply scarred by more than a decade of war
  • While Syria lobbies for sanctions relief, the grassroots reconstruction drive is gaining momentum and providing work opportunities

ALEPPO: Moussa Hajj Khalil is among many Syrians rebuilding their homes from the rubble of the historic and economically important city of Aleppo, as Syria’s new leaders struggle to kick-start large-scale reconstruction efforts.
Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city and a UNESCO World Heritage site, was deeply scarred by more than a decade of war between government and rebel forces, suffering battles, a siege, Russian air strikes and barrel bomb attacks.
Now, its people are trying to restore their lives with their own means, unwilling to wait and see if the efforts of Syria’s new Islamist-led government to secure international funding come to fruition.
“Nobody is helping us, no states, no organizations,” said Khalil, 65, who spent seven years in a displacement camp in Al-Haramain on the Syrian-Turkish border.
Impoverished residents have “come and tried to restore a room to stay in with their children, which is better than life in camps,” he said, as he observed workers repairing his destroyed home in Ratyan, a suburb in northwestern Aleppo.
Khalil returned alone a month ago to rebuild the house so he can bring his family back from the camp.
Aleppo was the first major city seized by the rebels when they launched an offensive to topple then-leader Bashar Assad in late November.
Assad was ousted less than two weeks later, ending a 14-year war that killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions and left much of Syria in ruins.

’Doing what we can’

While Syria lobbies for sanctions relief, the grassroots reconstruction drive is gaining momentum and providing work opportunities.
Contractors labor around the clock to meet the growing demand, salvaging materials like broken blocks and cement found between the rubble to repair homes.
“There is building activity now. We are working lots, thank God!” Syrian contractor Maher Rajoub said.
But the scale of the task is huge.
The United Nations Development Programme is hoping to deliver $1.3 billion over three years to support Syria, including by rebuilding infrastructure, its assistant secretary-general told Reuters earlier this month.
Other financial institutions and Gulf countries like Qatar have made pledges to help Syria, but are hampered by US sanctions.
The United States and other Western countries have set conditions for lifting sanctions, insisting that Syria’s new rulers, led by a faction formerly affiliated to Al-Qaeda, demonstrate a commitment to peaceful and inclusive rule.
A temporary suspension of some US sanctions to encourage aid has had limited effect, leaving Aleppo’s residents largely fending for themselves.
“We lived in the camps under the sun and the heat,” said Mustafa Marouch, a 50-year-old vegetable shop owner. “We returned and are doing what we can to fix our situation.”


Syrian Druze leaders slam ‘unjustified armed attack’ near Damascus

Syrian Druze leaders slam ‘unjustified armed attack’ near Damascus
Updated 29 April 2025
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Syrian Druze leaders slam ‘unjustified armed attack’ near Damascus

Syrian Druze leaders slam ‘unjustified armed attack’ near Damascus
  • The clashes reportedly left at least four Druze fighters dead

DAMASCUS: Syrian Druze leaders on Tuesday condemned an “unjustified armed attack” overnight on the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, after clashes with security forces that a war monitor said killed at least four Druze fighters.
Jaramana’s Druze religious leadership in a statement condemned “the unjustified armed attack” that “targeted innocent civilians and terrorized” residents, adding that the Syrian authorities bore “full responsibility for the incident and for any further developments or worsening of the crisis.”


Tunisia’s Saied slams ‘blatant interference’ after international criticism

Tunisia’s Saied slams ‘blatant interference’ after international criticism
Updated 29 April 2025
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Tunisia’s Saied slams ‘blatant interference’ after international criticism

Tunisia’s Saied slams ‘blatant interference’ after international criticism
  • Tunisian President Kais Saied rejected foreign criticism of opposition trials, calling it unacceptable interference in internal affairs

TUNIS: Tunisian President Kais Saied on Tuesday lashed out at “comments and statements by foreign parties” following sharp international criticism of a mass trial targeting opposition figures.
“The comments and statements by foreign parties are unacceptable... and constitute blatant interference in Tunisia’s internal affairs,” he said in a statement posted on the presidency’s Facebook page.
“While some have expressed regret over the exclusion of international observers, Tunisia could also send observers to these parties, who have expressed their concerns... and also demand that they change their legislation and amend their procedures,” he added.
Earlier this month, a Tunisian court handed down sentences of between 13 and 66 years to defendants accused of “conspiracy against state security” and “belonging to a terrorist group.”
The trial involved about 40 defendants, including well-known opposition figures, lawyers and business people, with some already in prison for two years and others in exile or still free.
Those abroad were tried in absentia, including French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy who received a 33-year jail term, lawyers said.
The United Nations and Western countries including France and Germany criticized the trial.
“The process was marred by violations of fair trial and due process rights, raising serious concerns about political motivations,” said the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk.
In a statement on Thursday, Turk urged “Tunisia to refrain from using broad national security and counterterrorism legislation to silence dissent and curb civic space.”
Germany meanwhile said it regretted the “exclusion of international observers from the final day of the trial,” including representatives from the German embassy in Tunis.
Since Saied launched a power grab in the summer of 2021 and assumed total control, rights advocates and opposition figures have decried a rollback of freedoms in the North African country where the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings began.


France tries Syrian Islamist rebel ex-spokesman on war crime charges

France tries Syrian Islamist rebel ex-spokesman on war crime charges
Updated 29 April 2025
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France tries Syrian Islamist rebel ex-spokesman on war crime charges

France tries Syrian Islamist rebel ex-spokesman on war crime charges
  • French authorities arrested Majdi Nema in the southern city of Marseille in 2020
  • He was spokesman for a Syrian Islamist rebel group called Jaish Al-Islam

PARIS: A Syrian Islamist rebel ex-spokesman is to go on trial in France on Tuesday under the principle of universal jurisdiction, accused of complicity in war crimes during Syria’s civil war.
French authorities arrested Majdi Nema, now 36, in the southern city of Marseille in 2020, after he traveled to the country on a student exchange program.
He was detained and charged under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows states to prosecute suspects accused of serious crimes regardless of where they were committed.
This is the first time that crimes committed in Syria’s civil war have been tried in France under the universal jurisdiction.
Nema – better known by his nom-de-guerre of Islam Alloush – has been charged with complicity in war crimes between 2013 and 2016, when he was spokesman for a Syrian Islamist rebel group called Jaish Al-Islam.
However, Nema has said he only had a “limited role” in the armed opposition group that held sway in the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus during that period.
Jaish Al-Islam was one of the main opposition groups fighting Bashar Assad’s government before Islamist-led fighters toppled him in December but it has also been accused of terrorizing civilians in areas it controlled.
Nema, who faces up to 20 years in jail if found guilty, has in particular been accused of helping recruit children and teenagers to fight for the group.
His arrest came after rights groups, including the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), filed a criminal complaint in France in 2019 against members of Jaish Al-Islam for their alleged crimes.
It was the FIDH that discovered Nema was in France during research into Jaish Al-Islam’s hierarchy and informed the French authorities.
Marc Bailly, a lawyer for the FIDH and some civil parties in the trial that runs to May 27, said the case would be “the opportunity to shed light on all the complexity of the Syrian conflict, which did not just involve regime crimes.”
Born in 1988, Nema was a captain in the Syrian armed forces before defecting in 2012 and joining the group that would in 2013 become known as Jaish Al-Islam.
He told investigators that he left Eastern Ghouta in May 2013 and crossed the border to Turkiye, where he worked as the group’s spokesman, before leaving the group in 2016.
He has cited his presence in Turkiye as part of his defense.
Nema traveled to France in November 2019 under a university exchange program and was arrested in January 2020.
The defendant was initially indicted for complicity in the enforced disappearances of four activists in Eastern Ghouta in late 2013 – including prominent rights defender Razan Zaitouneh – but those charges have since been dropped on procedural grounds.
Jaish Al-Islam has been accused of involvement in the abduction, though it has denied this.
France has since 2010 been able to try cases under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which argues some crimes are so serious that all states have the obligation to prosecute offenders.
The country’s highest court upheld this principle in 2023, allowing for the investigation into Nema to continue.
A previous trial in May of Syrians charged over their actions in the war took place because French nationals were the victims, rather than under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
A Paris court in that trial ordered life sentences for three top Syrian security officials linked to the former Assad government for their role in the torture and disappearance of a French-Syrian father and son in Syria in 2013.
They were tried in absentia.
Syria’s conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more from their homes since it erupted in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.


Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘live-streamed genocide’ against Gaza Palestinians

Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘live-streamed genocide’ against Gaza Palestinians
Updated 29 April 2025
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Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘live-streamed genocide’ against Gaza Palestinians

Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘live-streamed genocide’ against Gaza Palestinians
  • Rights group charges that Israel acted with ‘specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide’
  • Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip has left at least 52,243 dead

PARIS: Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.
In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide.”
Israel has rejected accusations of “genocide” from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.
The conflict erupted after the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.
“Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide,” Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.
“States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools,” she added.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons’ tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.
The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.
The lack of fuel “threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers,” it said in a statement.
Amnesty’s report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza “displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water.”
Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had “documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.”
It said Israel’s actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza’s population, and “deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”
Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, “the world’s governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire.”
Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of “apartheid.”
“Israel’s system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians,” it said.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced “the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year” as well as “the world’s complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it.”