Gaza girl longs to return to school as war disrupts education

Gaza girl longs to return to school as war disrupts education
Since the war began on Oct. 7, schools have been bombed or turned into shelters for displaced people, leaving Gaza’s estimated 625,000 school-aged children unable to attend classes. (Reuters)
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Updated 03 September 2024
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Gaza girl longs to return to school as war disrupts education

Gaza girl longs to return to school as war disrupts education
  • The 12-year-old missed grade six last year and will be deprived of grade seven as the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas rages on

GAZA: Gaza schoolgirl Rama Abu Seif longs to return to a classroom to study but it is now a dormitory for families displaced by war. 

Her books were burned to light fires in clay ovens. Her school bag is stuffed with clothes in case she needs to flee an Israeli bombardment quickly.

The 12-year-old missed grade six last year and will be deprived of grade seven as the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas rages on.

“Of course, the children who are my age and younger than me, they all want to go back to northern (Gaza) and relive their school days, study and play at school, but all of that is gone and we lost two years because of the war,” she said.

There are no prospects for Rama and many other children to return to school any time soon in the Gaza Strip, which has been laid to waste by Israeli bombardments.

Since the war began on Oct. 7, schools have been bombed or turned into shelters for displaced people, leaving Gaza’s estimated 625,000 school-aged children unable to attend classes.

Instead of playing sports and games in the school playground, Rama waits in long lines for her turn to collect water, which is often dirty and undrinkable.

And there is no end in sight.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced, triggering a hunger and health crisis in the enclave.

Rama and her classmates can only recall better days in an impoverished yet once vibrant Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Gaza and the occupied West Bank have internationally high literacy levels, and the under-resourced education system was a rare source of hope and pride among Palestinians.

“In the past we would open the bag and find the book in it, so we would take the book and study,” Rama said.

“But now we open the bag and find clothes inside it, clothes for displacement that we take with us wherever we go, from place to place.”


Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief

Updated 29 sec ago
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Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief

Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief
Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan said
“196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused Israel of “shamelessly” attacking UN chief Antonio Guterres by declaring him “persona non grata” for not quickly condemning Iran’s ballistic missile barrage.
Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan told an audience at a defense technology fair in the southern province of Adana.
He added that “196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel.
Relations between the UN and Israel have been difficult since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
On Wednesday, Guterres was declared persona non grata by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, accusing him of failing to specifically condemn Iran’s missile attack on the country this week. Katz called Guterres an “anti-Israel secretary-general who lends support to terrorists, rapists, and murderers.”
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said in a statement.
Guterres pointedly condemned Iran’s attack at a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday.
The Security Council on Thursday offered its full support to Guterres.
Without naming Israel, the council’s five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members “underscored the need for all member states to have a productive and effective relationship with the secretary-general.”

US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape

US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape
Updated 14 min 28 sec ago
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US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape

US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape
  • Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calling on the US to start an evacuation
  • Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said: “The US military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans”

WASHINGTON: US-arranged flights have brought about 350 Americans and their immediate relatives out of Lebanon this week during escalated fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, while thousands of others still there face airstrikes and diminishing commercial flights.
In Washington, senior State Department and White House officials met Thursday with two top Arab American officials to discuss US efforts to help American citizens leave Lebanon. The two leaders also separately met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security.
Michigan state Rep. Alabas Farhat and Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, used the White House meeting to “really drive home a lot of important points about the issues our community members are facing on the ground and a lot of the logistical problems that they’re encountering with it when it comes to this evacuation,” Ayoub said.
Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calling on the US to start an evacuation. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that was not being considered right now.
“The US military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans. Should we need to evacuate American citizens out of Lebanon, we absolutely can,” Singh told reporters.
Israel has opened a pounding air campaign deep into Lebanon and a ground incursion in the country’s south targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. Iran on Tuesday fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel, leaving the region bracing for any Israeli retaliation and fearing an all-out regional war.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering the war in Gaza.
Other countries, from Greece to the United Kingdom, Japan and Colombia, have arranged flights or sent military planes to ferry out their citizens.
As Israeli bombardments targeting senior Hezbollah leaders shook southern neighborhoods in Lebanon’s capital last week, “We could still see, hear and feel everything” despite fleeing to the mountains outside Beirut, said Nicolette Hutcherson, a longtime humanitarian volunteer living in Lebanon with her husband and three children.
The only seats Hutcherson’s family could find on commercial carriers were for flights weeks away and for thousands of dollars, she said. Ultimately, Hutcherson and her young children joined crowds heading to Lebanon’s Mediterranean marinas, finding spots on pleasure boats turned evacuation ships for the nine-hour ride to Cyprus.
Her husband was able to find a single seat out on a plane days later to join them.
Another American family was mourning Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a resident of metro Detroit’s Dearborn area, who was killed in southern Lebanon on Tuesday. Family members said he stayed to help civilians too old, infirm or poor to flee.
He had been on the phone with his daughter Tuesday when the impact of a strike knocked him off his feet, his daughter, Nadine Kamel Jawad, said in a statement.
“He simply got up, found his phone, and told me he needed to finish praying in case another strike hit him,” she said.
The State Department has been telling Americans for almost a year not to travel to Lebanon and advising them to leave the country on commercial flights for months. It also has made clear that government-run evacuations are rare, while offering emergency loans to aid travel out of Lebanon.
Some Americans said relatives who are US citizens or green-card holders have been struggling for days or weeks to get seats on flights out of Lebanon. Limits on withdrawing money from banks due to Lebanon’s longstanding economic collapse and intermittent electricity and Internet have made it difficult, they said.
Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a lawyer based in Washington, paid $5,000 to get a female relative on the last seat of a flight out of Beirut on Saturday.
“She was on her way to the airport” when Israeli began one of its first days of intensified bombing, Abou-Chedid said.
By Thursday, some Americans said their loved ones had been able to secure tickets for upcoming flights and were hopeful.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US would continue to organize flights as long the security situation in Lebanon is dire and there is demand.
Miller said Lebanon’s flag carrier, Middle East Airlines, also had set aside about 1,400 seats on flights for Americans over the past week. Several hundred had taken them, he said.
Miller could not speak to the cost of the airline’s flights, over which the US government has no regulatory oversight, but said the maximum fare that would be charged for a US-organized contract flight would be $283 per person.
More than 6,000 American citizens have contacted the US Embassy in Beirut seeking information about departing the country over the past week.
Not all of those have actually sought assistance in leaving, and Miller said the department understood that some Americans, many of them dual US-Lebanese nationals and longtime residents of the country, may choose to stay.
Miller said the embassy is prepared to offer temporary loans to Americans who choose to remain in Lebanon but want to relocate to a potentially safer area of the country. The embassy also would provide emergency loans to Americans who wish to leave on the US-contracted flights.


Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel

Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel
Updated 04 October 2024
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Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel

Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel
  • The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led militant factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 29 Palestinians on Friday, medics said, and sirens blared in southern Israel in response to renewed rocket fire from militants in the Palestinian enclave.
The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led militant factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel despite a year-long Israeli aerial and ground offensive that has turned wide areas of the enclave into wasteland.
On Friday, the Israeli military said sirens sounded in southern Israel for the first time in around two months.
“Almost a year after Oct. 7, Hamas is still threatening our civilians with their terrorism and we will continue operating against them,” it added, referring to the anniversary of Hamas’ cross-border attack that touched off the Gaza war.


Dramatic footage shows moment oil tanker struck by Houthi drone

Dramatic footage shows moment oil tanker struck by Houthi drone
Updated 04 October 2024
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Dramatic footage shows moment oil tanker struck by Houthi drone

Dramatic footage shows moment oil tanker struck by Houthi drone
  • Group releases video of explosion engulfing Cordelia Moon as it passed through Red Sea
  • Houthis have threatened to ‘escalate military operations’ after Israeli air raids last week

LONDON: Footage has been released of an oil tanker being struck by a Houthi drone vessel in the Red Sea.

The group published a video appearing to show the unmanned boat colliding with the Panama-flagged Cordelia Moon on Tuesday.

In the footage, a large explosion is seen on the vessel’s port side, followed by a plume of smoke engulfing the tanker. Its crew reported no major injuries and that all aboard are safe.

The attack reportedly occurred about 70 miles (110 km) off the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, which is controlled by the militia.

The Houthis later claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said involved eight ballistic and winged missiles, a drone and an unmanned boat.

The US Navy said that the captain of a nearby vessel reported seeing four “splashes” in the water around the Cordelia Moon, believed to have been caused by missiles launched at the tanker missing their target.

Though the Houthis described the Cordelia Moon as a British ship, it is managed by an Indian company called Margao Marine Solutions.

Meanwhile, British security firm Amber reported that a second vessel, sailing under the Liberian flag, was struck by a missile about 97 nautical miles northwest of Hodeidah later that day as it traveled toward the Suez Canal. Its crew also reported no major injuries and that all aboard are safe.

The two attacks represent a return to the targeting of commercial shipping by the Houthis after a brief hiatus in operations.

The group began attacking vessels in the region following Israel’s invasion of Gaza last year.

The Houthis have also launched drone and missile attacks against Israel since the start of hostilities, and on Monday threatened to “escalate military operations” after shooting down a US military drone as it flew over Yemen. That incident followed a series of Israeli air raids over Houthi-occupied Yemen last week, which hit a number of military and oil installations.


Three Lebanese hospitals suspend services amid Israeli bombing: statements

Three Lebanese hospitals suspend services amid Israeli bombing: statements
Updated 04 October 2024
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Three Lebanese hospitals suspend services amid Israeli bombing: statements

Three Lebanese hospitals suspend services amid Israeli bombing: statements
  • Sainte Therese Hospital near Beirut’s southern suburbs reported “huge damage” to the building

BEIRUT: Three hospitals in Lebanon including one on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs announced Friday the suspension of work, amid ongoing Israeli bombardment.
In statements carried by the official National News Agency, Sainte Therese Hospital near Beirut’s southern suburbs reported “huge damage” to the building on Thursday due to Israeli bombardment in the vicinity and the subsequent “halt of hospital services,” while two hospitals in the country’s south also said services had stopped.