Main hospital in central Gaza empties out as Israeli forces draw near

Main hospital in central Gaza empties out as Israeli forces draw near
A member of staff cleans an empty ward of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip following renewed Israeli evacuation orders for the area on August 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Updated 27 August 2024
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Main hospital in central Gaza empties out as Israeli forces draw near

Main hospital in central Gaza empties out as Israeli forces draw near
  • Israeli evacuation orders now cover around 84 percent of Gaza’s territory, according to the United Nations

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: One of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals has been emptying out in recent days as Israel has ordered the evacuation of nearby areas and signaled a possible ground operation in a town that has been largely spared throughout the war, officials said Monday.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah is the main hospital serving central Gaza. The Israeli military has not ordered its evacuation, but patients and people sheltering there fear that it may be engulfed in fighting or become the target of a raid.
Also on Monday, Israeli strikes in Gaza City and Khan Younis killed at least 19 people, according to local officials, and fighting between Israel and Hezbollah resumed across the Lebanon border.
Israeli forces have invaded several hospitals in Gaza over the course of the 10-month-old war, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes, allegations denied by Palestinian health officials.
Israeli evacuation orders now cover around 84 percent of Gaza’s territory, according to the United Nations, which estimates that around 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been forced from their homes. Many have been displaced multiple times.
The evacuation orders have reduced the size of the humanitarian zone declared by Israel at the start of the war while crowding more Palestinians into it. Thousands of Palestinian families have packed into tent camps along the beach where aid groups say food and clean water are scarce and disease spreads quickly.
The most recent satellite images available from PlanetLabs and analyzed by The Associated Press show the increase in tent density along the beachfront since July 19.
AP reporters saw people fleeing the hospital and surrounding areas on Monday, many on foot. Some pushed patients on stretchers or carried sick children, while others held bags of clothes, mattresses and blankets. Four schools in the area were also being evacuated.
“Where will we get medicine?” Adliyeh Al-Najjar said as she rested outside the hospital gate. “Where will patients like me go?”
Fatimah Al-Attar fought back tears as she left the hospital compound heading in the direction of the tent camps. “Our fate is to die,” she said. “There is no place for us to go. There is no safe place.”
The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs known as OCHA said that since Friday the Israeli military has issued three evacuation orders for over 19 neighborhoods in northern Gaza and in Deir al Balah, affecting more than 8,000 people staying in these areas.
The order covers an area including or near UN and other humanitarian centers, the Al Aqsa hospital, two clinics, three wells, one water reservoir and one desalination plant, said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for OCHA.
“This effectively upends a whole lifesaving humanitarian hub,” Laerke said.
Doctors Without Borders, an international charity known by its French acronym MSF, said an explosion around 250 meters (yards) from the hospital on Sunday caused panic, accelerating the exodus.
“As a result, MSF is considering whether to suspend wound care for the time being, while trying to maintain life-saving treatment,” it said on the platform X.
The hospital says it was treating over 600 patients before the evacuation orders, which apply to residential areas about a kilometer (0.6 mile) away. Around 100 patients remain, including seven in intensive care and eight in the children’s ward.
The Israeli military said it was operating against Hamas in Deir Al-Balah and working to dismantle its remaining infrastructure there. It said the evacuation orders were issued to protect civilians, and did not include nearby hospitals or medical facilities. It said it had also informed Palestinian health officials that the facilities did not need to be evacuated.
The army has excluded hospitals from past evacuation orders, but patients and others have still fled, fearing for their safety.
Israel’s military said Monday that its forces were expanding operations on the outskirts of Deir Al-Balah and had discovered weapons in a residential apartment and dismantled an underground Hamas tunnel about 700 meters (765 yards) long.
Local health officials said an Israeli airstrike hit a group of people on the seashore in Gaza City, killing at least seven men while they were fishing.
Another strike hit a vehicle inside the Israeli-declared humanitarian zone near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing at least five people, according to a Kuwaiti field hospital, where the bodies were taken.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those attacks.
Monday night, a strike hit a house in Maghazi, a refugee camp near Deir Al-Balah, and killed at least seven people, including four children and a woman, according to hospital records and AP journalists who counted the bodies. Ambulances recovered the bodies that were taken to Al Aqsa hospital.
The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli army bases and farming communities. The militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged around 250 hostages back to Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and caused heavy destruction across much of the territory. Hamas is still holding around 110 hostages, about a third of whom are believed to be dead, after most of the rest were freed in a ceasefire last year.
Israel has continued carrying out strikes across Gaza as the United States, Egypt and Qatar have tried to broker a lasting ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages. Major gaps remain despite several months of high-level negotiations.
Hospitals have repeatedly been turned into battlegrounds, both literally and in the rival narratives surrounding the war.
Israel’s army has raided a number of medical facilities since the start of the war and has provided some evidence that militants were inside some of them. Medical staff deny the allegations and accuse the army of reckless disregard for civilians.
Hospitals can lose their protected status under international law if they are used for military purposes, but any operations against them must be proportional and seek to spare civilians.
Only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are even partially functioning, according to the World Health Organization, even as they treat casualties from daily Israeli airstrikes across the territory. The difficulty of importing and distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has contributed to widespread hunger and disease outbreaks, further stressing the health sector.


At least five killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque

At least five killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque
Updated 06 October 2024
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At least five killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque

At least five killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque
  • Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry

GAZA: At least five people were killed and 20 others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a Gaza mosque early on Sunday, medics said.
The strike on the mosque, near the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, came as the Israel’s war in the Palestinian enclave approaches its first anniversary.
Eyewitnesses said the number of casualties could rise as the mosque was being used to house displaced people.
The Israeli military said in a statement it “conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded in a structure that previously served as the ‘Shuhada Al-Aqsa’ Mosque in the area of Deir al Balah.”
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It has also displaced nearly all of the enclave’s 2.3 million people, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.

 


Hezbollah says repelled ‘attempted’ Israeli infiltration at border village

Hezbollah says repelled ‘attempted’ Israeli infiltration at border village
Updated 06 October 2024
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Hezbollah says repelled ‘attempted’ Israeli infiltration at border village

Hezbollah says repelled ‘attempted’ Israeli infiltration at border village

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Hezbollah said its fighters pushed away Israeli troops that attempted to storm into a Lebanese border village early Sunday, in the latest clashes after Israel announced ground operations earlier this week.
The fighters launched “artillery shells” at “Israeli enemy soldiers who attempted to infiltrate from... Blida... forcing (them) to retreat,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement.

 

 


Iran ‘ongoing threat’ to Israel, says president

Iran ‘ongoing threat’ to Israel, says president
Updated 06 October 2024
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Iran ‘ongoing threat’ to Israel, says president

Iran ‘ongoing threat’ to Israel, says president
  • Since late September the conflict with Hezbollah has escalated into full-on war

JERUSALEM: President Isaac Herzog said on Saturday that Iran remains an “ongoing threat” to Israel, a year after the unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants.
“In many senses we are still living the aftermath of October 7... It is in the ongoing threat to the Jewish State by Iran and its terror proxies, who are blinded by hatred and bent on the destruction of our one and only Jewish nation state,” Herzog said in a statement to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas onslaught.
On October 1, Iran struck Israel with about 200 missiles in what was its second direct attack in less than six months during the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
US officials told American news outlets after Iran’s earlier strike in April that Israel in turn carried out a retaliatory strike on the Islamic republic.
Iran had targeted Israel with drones and missiles after a deadly strike, which it blamed on Israel, against Tehran’s embassy consular annex in Syria.
The latest missile barrage from Iran came, it said, in retaliation for the killings of top militant leaders.
In response to the missile fire, most of which was intercepted, Iran and much of the international community is now bracing for a potential Israeli attack on the Islamic republic.
The attack by Palestinian militants Hamas almost a year ago triggered war with Israel that continues in the Gaza Strip, as well as supporting fire from Iran-backed groups in the Middle East, mainly Lebanon’s Hezbollah which is armed and financed by Iran.
Since late September the conflict with Hezbollah has escalated into full-on war.


Israeli air strikes target Palestinian refugee camp, Hezbollah TV studios in Beirut

Israeli air strikes target Palestinian refugee camp, Hezbollah TV studios in Beirut
Updated 06 October 2024
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Israeli air strikes target Palestinian refugee camp, Hezbollah TV studios in Beirut

Israeli air strikes target Palestinian refugee camp, Hezbollah TV studios in Beirut
  • Refugee camp deep in the north hit for the first time as strikes target both Hezbollah and Hamas fighters
  • Building housing studios of Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV channel also targeted 

BEIRUT: Powerful new explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs late Saturday as Israel expanded its bombardment in Lebanon, striking a Palestinian refugee camp deep in the north for the first time as it targeted both Hezbollah and Hamas fighters.

A series of strong explosions were reported near midnight after Israel’s military called on residents to evacuate areas in Beirut’s Haret Hreik and Choueifat neighborhoods. Residents were also told to evacuate buildings in the areas of Al-Kafaat, Al-Laylaki, and the Madi neighborhood.

Blasts illuminated the skyline of the densely populated southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. They followed a day of sporadic strikes and the nearly continuous buzz of reconnaissance drones.

The strong explosions began near midnight and continued into Sunday after Israel’s military urged residents to evacuate areas in Dahiyeh, the predominantly Shiite collection of suburbs on Beirut’s southern edge.

A  building near a road leading to the Rarik Hariri International Airport was among those hit, triggering violent explosions followed by a massive fire. Social media reports claimed that one of the strikes hit an oxygen tank storage facility, but this was later denied by the owner of the company Khaled Kaddouha.

A building known to house studios of Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV channel was also targeted in the strikes.

Thousands of people in Lebanon, including Palestinian refugees from the Sabra and Shatila camps, continued to flee the widening conflict in the region, while rallies were held around the world marking the approaching anniversary of the start of the war in Gaza.

A video clip posted by LBCI Lebanon News on the X platform showed chaos and confusion along the streets as people rushed for their safety.

Israel’s military confirmed it was striking targets near Beirut and said about 30 projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, with some intercepted.

 

Shortly thereafter, Hezbollah claimed in a statement that it successfully targeted a group of Israeli soldiers near the Manara settlement in northern Israel “with a large rocket salvo, hitting them accurately.”

On Saturday, Israel’s attack on the northern Beddawi camp killed an official with Hamas’ military wing along with his wife and two young daughters, the Palestinian militant group said. Hamas later said another military wing member was killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. The aftermath showed smashed buildings, scattered bricks and stairways to nowhere.

Israel has killed several Hamas officials in Lebanon since the Israel-Hamas war began , in addition to most of the top leadership of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah as fighting has sharply escalated.

At least 1,400 Lebanese, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million driven from their homes in less than two weeks. Israel says it aims to drive the militant group away from shared borders so displaced Israelis can return to their homes.

Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the strongest armed force in Lebanon, began firing rockets into Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, calling it a show of support for the Palestinians. Hezbollah and Israel’s military have traded fire almost daily.

Last week, Israel launched what it called a limited ground operation into southern Lebanon after a series of attacks killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others. The fighting is the worst since Israel and Hezbollah fought a brief war in 2006. Nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ground clashes that Israel says have killed 440 Hezbollah fighters.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told reporters in Damascus that “we are trying to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and in Lebanon.” The minister said the unnamed countries putting forward initiatives include regional states and some outside the Middle East.

Araghchi spoke a day after the supreme leader of Iran praised its recent missile strikes on Israel and said it was ready to do it again if necessary.

On Saturday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “Israel has the duty and the right to defend itself and respond to these attacks, and it will do so.” On Lebanon, he said ”we are not done yet.”

Fleeing Lebanon on foot

Israel’s military earlier Saturday said about 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Most were intercepted, but several fell in the northern Arab town of Deir Al-Asad, where police said three people were lightly injured.

At least six people in Lebanon were killed in more than a dozen Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Saturday, according to the Lebanese state-run National News Agency.

Nearly 375,000 people have fled from Lebanon into Syria in less than two weeks, according to a Lebanese government committee.

Associated Press journalists saw hundreds continuing to cross the Masnaa Border Crossing on foot, crunching over the rubble after Israeli airstrikes left huge craters in the road leading to it on Thursday. Much of Hezbollah’s weaponry is believed to come from Iran through Syria.

“We were on the road for two days,” said Issa Hilal, one of many Syrian refugees in Lebanon who are now heading back. “The roads were very crowded … it was very difficult. We almost died getting here.” Some children whimpered or cried.

Other displaced families now shelter alongside Beirut’s famous seaside Corniche, their wind-flapped tents just steps from luxury homes. “We don’t care if we die, but we don’t want to die at the hands of Netanyahu,” said Om Ali Mcheik.

The Israeli military said special forces were carrying out ground raids against Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. It said troops dismantled tunnel shafts that Hezbollah used to approach the Israeli border.

More evacuation orders in Gaza

Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the Health Ministry there, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. Almost 90 percent of Gaza’s residents are displaced, amid widespread destruction.

Palestinian medical officials said Israeli strikes in northern and central Gaza on Saturday killed at least nine people. One in the northern town of Beit Hanoun killed at least five, including two children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Another hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least four, Awda hospital said.

Israel’s military did not have any immediate comment but has long accused Hamas of operating from within civilian areas.

An Israeli airstrike killed two children in Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighborhood, according to the civil defense first responders’ group that operates under the Hamas-run government.

Israel’s military warned Palestinians to evacuate along the strategic Netzarim corridor in central Gaza that was at the heart of obstacles to a ceasefire deal. The military told people in parts of the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps to evacuate to Muwasi, a coastal area it has designated a humanitarian zone.

It’s unclear how many Palestinians are in those areas. Israeli forces have often returned to areas in Gaza to target Hamas fighters as they regroup.


Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary

Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
Updated 06 October 2024
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Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary

Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
  • Israel has killed at least 41,825 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry and described as reliable by the UN
  • Ahead of the October 7 anniversary, thousands joined pro-Palestinian rallies in London, Paris, Cape Town and other cities

JERUSALEM: Israel placed its forces on alert Saturday ahead of the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, after a military official said the country is preparing its retaliation for Iran’s missile attack.
The alert came with Israel engaged in an intensifying war with the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which army chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said would be hit “without concession or respite.”
Ahead of Monday’s grim anniversary, military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said at a televised briefing: “We are prepared with increased forces in anticipation for this day,” when there could be “attacks on the home front.”
The unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian group resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
One year later, although the war in Gaza continues at a lower tempo, Israel has turned its focus north to Lebanon, where it is now at war with Hezbollah, and is focused on the movement’s backer Iran.
The Israeli military said it had killed around 440 Hezbollah fighters “from the ground and from the air” since Monday when troops began “targeted” ground operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel says it aims to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by almost a year of Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel to return home.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog called Iran an “ongoing threat” after Tehran, which backs armed groups across the Middle East, on Tuesday launched around 200 missiles at Israel in revenge for Israeli killings of top militant leaders.

The missile attack killed one person in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and caused some damage to an Israeli air base according to satellite images.
It came on the day Israeli ground forces began their raids into Lebanon after days of intense strikes on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon.
An Israeli military official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said the army “is preparing a response” to Iran’s attack.
Later, Hagari said Israel’s response would come at a “place and time we decide.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement, noted Iran had twice launched “hundreds of missiles” at Israeli territory since April.
“Israel has the duty and the right to defend itself and to respond to these attacks and that is what we will do,” said Netanyahu, whose critics accuse him of obstructing efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire and deal to free hostages still held by Hamas.
A high-level Hezbollah source said Saturday the group had lost contact with Hashem Safieddine, widely tipped to be the next Hezbollah leader, after air strikes this week in Beirut.
The movement is yet to name a new chief after Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah late last month in a massive strike in the Lebanese capital.
Late Saturday Israel issued a new appeal for residents of southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, to evacuate.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday said that “the resistance in the region will not back down.”

On Saturday Hezbollah said its fighters were confronting Israeli troops in Lebanon’s southern border region, where the Israeli military said it struck militants inside a mosque in Bint Jbeil.
The military reported frequent rocket fire from Lebanon while Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on northern Israel’s Ramat David air base, and on a “military industries company” near Israel’s coastal city of Acre.
Hamas said Israeli strikes killed two of its operatives in north and east Lebanon on Saturday, as Israel’s military confirmed the killing of two Hamas figures.
Hamas said one of them was hit near Tripoli, the first such strike in the northern area.
Netanyahu said Israel had “destroyed a large part” of Hezbollah’s arsenal and “changed the course of the war.”
In a March report, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said estimates of Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles varied from 120,000-200,000.
On central Beirut’s busy Hamra Street, Salma Salman said she had been camping out with her seven-year-old twin daughters for nearly two weeks.
“We’re living a terrifying, never-ending nightmare,” she said.
Across Lebanon, the wave of strikes on Hezbollah strongholds has killed more than 1,110 people since September 23, according to a tally based on official figures.
The head of the UN’s refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, said in Lebanon that the country “faces a terrible crisis” and warned “hundreds of thousands of people are left destitute or displaced by Israeli air strikes.”
Israeli bombardment has put at least four hospitals in Lebanon out of service, the facilities said.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said it rejected a request by the Israeli military to “relocate some of our positions” in south Lebanon.
Ireland’s President Michael Higgins, whose country has peacekeepers in the mission, said Israel was “demanding that the entire UNIFIL... walk away,” which he called “an insult to the most important global institution.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, visiting Damascus on Saturday after a stop in Beirut, renewed his call for ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon while threatening Israel with an “even stronger” reaction to any attack on Iran.
French President Emmanuel Macron said it was time “that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” adding that France was not providing any.
He also criticized Israel’s decision to send ground troops into Lebanon.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators tried unsuccessfully for months to reach a Gaza truce and secure the release of 97 hostages still held in the Hamas-ruled territory.
Medics and rescuers said Israeli fire early Saturday killed at least 12 people across Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,825 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry and described as reliable by the UN.
Ahead of the October 7 anniversary, thousands joined pro-Palestinian rallies in London, Paris, Cape Town and other cities.
Herzog, the Israeli president, said his country’s October 7 “wounds still cannot fully heal.”