Death toll in Lebanon pager-explosion attack rises to 12

A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center as people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate with exploded. (Reuters)
A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center as people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate with exploded. (Reuters)
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Updated 18 September 2024
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Death toll in Lebanon pager-explosion attack rises to 12

A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center.
  • 2 children and a woman among the dead and 300 people are in critical condition in hospital, says health minister
  • Israeli authorities are accused of booby-trapping and detonating 3,000 handheld pager devices used by members of Hezbollah

BEIRUT: A day after thousands of handheld pagers used by members of Hezbollah in Lebanon to communicate with each other exploded simultaneously, the death toll from attack has risen to 12, Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said on Wednesday.

Two children and a woman were among the dead, he added, and the number of people in critical condition in hospital has increased to 300. Hezbollah and Lebanese authorities accuse Israel of carrying out the attack.

A medical source told Arab News that Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Rassoul Al-Aazam Hospital alone has treated 400 injuries out of approximately 2,800 caused by the pager explosions, and St. George Hospital, also linked with Hezbollah, reported 30 cases.

The injured at the hospitals included medical staff, nursing personnel and administrative workers who had pagers. As a result, Al-Rassoul Al-Aazam had to close its doors to other patients while it focused solely on treating injured members of staff. One of its nurses was reportedly among the dead.

Meanwhile other hospitals, of which there are about 100 across the country, the health minister said, faced significant pressure as they attempted to cope with floods of hundreds of patients injured in the explosions.

The medical source exclusively revealed to Arab News that “all the injured individuals presented alternative names instead of their real identities at the hospitals. Some of the injured sustained burns and were transferred to Geitawi Hospital, the only specialized burns hospital in Beirut.”

The source added that a majority of the patients sustained eye injuries and hundreds of them needed emergency surgery. Many of these operations were carried out at a specialist eye hospital in Beirut’s National Museum area, where surgeries continued late into the night on Tuesday.

Ophthalmologist Elias Jradi, who is also an MP, said he “remained in the operating room performing continuous operations for more than seven hours.”

On Wednesday, Abiad said 460 operations were carried out on people injured by the pagers, who suffered various types of injuries affecting “the eyes, head, chest, waist and legs. The fingers and hands of some of the injured who were holding the pagers at the time of their explosion were amputated.”

He added that 750 people were injured in the south of the country, 150 in the Bekaa region, and 1,850 in Beirut and its southern suburbs.

The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, sustained facial injuries in the attack and was receiving treatment. Members of Hezbollah in Syria were also injured and treated in hospitals there.

For a second day, urgent calls for blood donations to help treat the injured continued on Wednesday. Meanwhile, accounts of the chaos and confusion that followed the attack continued to emerge.

Hussein, who helped to transport the injured in the southern suburbs of Beirut to the American University Hospital, said: “The scene in the street was terrifying; young people were bleeding and no one understood the cause. Some who were unaware of the situation mistakenly believed that these youths were suicide bombers who had detonated themselves. It was a state of utter chaos. I returned home late, feeling defeated, broken and psychologically shattered.”

Speculation grew in the 24 hours after the attack about the circumstances surrounding the explosions, fueled by media reports and leaked information from Lebanese security agencies, as well as sources in Israel and the US.

Reuters reported that “Mossad planted small quantities of explosives within 5,000 Taiwanese-made pager devices that Hezbollah had ordered months prior to the explosions that occurred. It appears that the conspiracy took several months to prepare.”

The devices carried the logo of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo and the shipment arrived in Lebanon in the spring. However, the company denied that it manufactured the pagers involved in the attack. It said they were made by a separate company in Hungary that had simply licensed the use of the Gold Apollo brand.

Reports suggested that Mossad managed to modify the devices during production by adding between 1 and 3 grams of explosive to the circuit boards. Such a modification would have been extremely difficult to detect, even using scanners. It is believed that an encrypted message triggered the detonation that caused about 3,000 pagers to explode simultaneously.

Hezbollah uses pagers because they are more difficult to track and monitor compared with more sophisticated smart communications devices, to which Israeli authorities have managed to gain access in recent months to target party members.

Citing information provided by intelligence sources, news website Al-Monitor reported: “Israel carried out the attack after it gathered information that Hezbollah suspected the pagers were compromised, prompting Israel to execute the detonation plan before it was too late.”

The sources added: “The original plan was to detonate the devices in case a full-scale war was to happen, in order to have a strategic advantage.”

The situation along the southern Lebanese front remained relatively calm on on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Iraq and Jordan sent medical supplies that arrived via Beirut airport. Aid workers affiliated with the Iranian Red Crescent also arrived in Beirut, as authorities in Iran accused Israel of “mass killing.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the “collective detonation of communication devices requires an international investigation and interest.”

Belgium’s deputy prime minister, Petra De Sutter, said that “the attack against Syria and Lebanon is a brutal escalation of violence,” as she called for “an international investigation and an end to the bloodshed.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati received a telephone call from Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, in which the latter expressed his country’s solidarity with Lebanon. Mikati received a similar message of support from Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs, Hakan Fidan.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and labor unions announced a nationwide shutdown following the attack.

Political figures from several parties and factions, including the opposition, visited the home of Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar to offer condolences following the death of his son in the explosions.

The National Disaster and Crisis Response Operations Coordination Committee was on alert in case of any further developments related to the incident.

Nasser Yassin, a government minister, said: “There is a shortage of ophthalmologists and eye surgeons. What happened yesterday was a real war.

“Discussions have mainly focused on housing, in case a new wave of migration takes place amid possible aggression expansion. We identified 100 schools that can be prepared for shelter. These are all potential scenarios that we have discussed to enhance our preparedness.”

On the issue of food security, Yassin said: “Lebanon’s food reserves are sufficient for more than three months, and a ship carrying 40,000 tonnes of wheat and flour is on its way.”


Lebanese worldwide fear for their homeland and loved ones as violence escalates

Lebanese worldwide fear for their homeland and loved ones as violence escalates
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Lebanese worldwide fear for their homeland and loved ones as violence escalates

Lebanese worldwide fear for their homeland and loved ones as violence escalates
  • The current military escalation unfolds amid fears that fighting could spread in the region and comes as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza nears the grim one-year mark
It was a year ago when Jomana Siddiqui visited Lebanon, where her father was born — and is now buried. She planned to return there soon; this time, she thought, she would take her two teenage daughters.
Instead, Siddiqui, who lives in California, now worries about relatives there. As she watches from afar the violence and the recent escalation in Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Siddiqui thinks about the people she met during her visit, the kindness and generosity she encountered.
She thinks about her father’s grave — when, or if, she will get to visit it again. Her voice cracks with emotions. It’s been gut-wrenching, she said.
“It’s like the universal story of the Lebanese people,” she said. “They have to keep leaving and not knowing when they can come back.”
From the United States to South Africa, Cyprus, Brazil and beyond, many members of Lebanon’s far-flung and large diaspora are contending with the ripples of the violence — grieving, gripped by fear for loved ones and for their homeland, trying to find ways to help.
Some 1,400 Lebanese, including civilians and fighters of the militant group Hezbollah, have been killed and some 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September, saying it aims to push Hezbollah away from the countries’ shared border.
For Lina Kayat, who moved to South Africa almost 36 years ago but still has a big family in Lebanon, the violence and tensions there have echoes of earlier turbulent chapters.
“We lived through a civil war for a long time; I was like seven years old,” she said. “It feels like history repeating itself. ... It’s the unknown of who is going to get killed next.”
Kayat, who lives in South Africa’s coastal city of Durban, speaks daily to her family, including her mother and her sister.
“They are very scared and very worried about what is going to happen,” she said.
Generations of Lebanese have grappled with whether to leave to seek better opportunities or escape various times of tumult — from a 15-year-old civil war to military occupations, bombings and political assassinations — or stay in a Lebanon that despite its numerous scars retains its allure for many. Lebanon — home to multiple religious groups, including Christians and Sunni and Shiite Muslims — takes pride in its large emigrant communities, which include successful businessmen and celebrities of Lebanese heritage.
The current military escalation unfolds amid fears that fighting could spread in the region and comes as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza nears the grim one-year mark.
“It happening on top of Gaza is almost too much to bear,” said James Zogby, president of the Washington D.C.-based Arab American Institute.
“It almost makes you physically ill just trying to fathom the extent of the trauma,” added Zogby, whose father was born in Lebanon.
Already, Lebanon had been on edge and struggling under the weight of an economic meltdown, the fallout from a massive 2020 port explosion and other crises. It’s been without a president for two years.
Against such a somber backdrop, Zogby wonders what will become of the displaced.
“Who’s going to care for them? Where do the health services come from ... when the country is already as overstretched as it is and on the verge of collapse?” he said. “At what point does it finally collapse? And who will care?”
Fueling the pain, he said, is his anger at the US response to the devastation in Gaza and now the escalation in Lebanon.
“There’s a sense of powerlessness, a sense of almost despair that, you know, it can get out of control. And as long as nothing here happens to restrain it, it will get worse.”
Akram Khater, director of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University, said that since the earliest diaspora, Lebanese who left have been contributing heavily to the economic well-being of Lebanon, sending large amounts of remittances.
Watching the escalation in Lebanon, where he was born and raised, has been re-traumatizing, he said.
“I find myself amidst a swirl of emotions that are unresolved and that derive from this recurring nightmare,” he said. “Yet, even amidst this our community comes together to create solidarity and provide solace and comfort for each other.”
Recently, hundreds of Lebanese flags filled the night sky in Dearborn, Michigan, as some attended a rally to support Lebanon and protest the Israeli offensive there.
At Sao Paulo’s international airport, two Lebanese brothers who’ve been living in Brazil, recently had a solemn reunion. They said eight of their loved ones — their sister, brother-in-law, four of their nephews and two of their nephews’ children — were killed in Lebanon in one of the attacks.
Hussein Zeineddine, one of the brothers, had been on vacation with his family in southern Lebanon when the area was hit by Israeli attacks, he told The Associated Press. He and his family moved to a safer location until they could book flights back to Brazil. “My wife was crying and asking us to leave. We left just with basic items. And then, shortly after, my sister’s house was bombed,” he said after his arrival.
“It will be tough here. But it will be tougher for people there,” he said.
In Cyprus, Rosaline Ghoukassian said the overwhelming majority of Lebanese don’t want this war. She relocated to Cyprus with her husband Raffi Garabedian and their daughter Maria after the 2020 ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut’s port that killed more than 200 people. She said she’d been disenchanted with Lebanon’s political leadership and also lamented Hezbollah’s influence.
“We knew this was coming,” she said. “The problem is in Lebanon. ... Because we don’t have a good government.”
Their decision to leave Lebanon was never about money but safety, as their daughter explained in a letter she wrote in class in Cyprus: “I don’t want to go there because I was saved in the explosion, and I don’t want to go live there because I don’t want to die.”
The family chose to stay.
“I’m not here to make thousands of euros. No. I’m here just to live. To be happy, to be safe. This is what I want. To live,” Garabedian said.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel the day after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which the militants killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. Since then, Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
Back in California, Siddiqui said coping with it all has been challenging.
“You grab the phone; you hesitate to open it because you’re afraid of what you’re going to see, but you kind of have to.”
She talks to friends and others in her circle who can relate.
“We all feel kind of sad, depressed, helpless, rundown,” she said. “We can do things like fundraise and donate and protest or anything like that, but at the end of the day, it still weighs on you.”

A displaced family’s year of fleeing across the devastated Gaza Strip

A displaced family’s year of fleeing across the devastated Gaza Strip
Updated 06 October 2024
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A displaced family’s year of fleeing across the devastated Gaza Strip

A displaced family’s year of fleeing across the devastated Gaza Strip
  • Israel’s war on Gaza has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza — 1.9 million of its 2.3 million Palestinians

DEIR AL-BALAH: Ne’man Abu Jarad sat on a tarp on the ground. Around him, canvas sheets hung from cords, forming the walls of his tent. For the past year, Ne’man; his wife, Majida; and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, trying to survive as Israeli forceswreaked destruction around them.
It’s a far cry from their house in northern Gaza — a place of comforting routine, of love, affection and safety. A place where loved ones gathered around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine flowers.
“Your house is your homeland. Everything good in our life was the home,” Ne’man said. “Everything in it, whether physical or intangible — family, neighbors, my siblings who were all around me.
“We are missing all that.”
The Abu Jarad family lost that stability when Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
They did exactly as the Israelis ordered in the devastating weeks and months of war that followed. They obeyed evacuation calls. They moved where the military told them to move. Seven times they fled, and each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them, crowding with strangers in a school classroom, searching for water in a vast tent camp or sleeping on the street.


The Associated Press traced the family’s journey as they were driven from their home. Israel’s war has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza — 1.9 million of its 2.3 million Palestinians — and killed more than 41,600 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Like the Abu Jarads, most families have been uprooted multiple times.
For this family, the journey has taken them from a comfortable middle-class life to ruin.
Before the war: A cozy life
Living at the northernmost end of Gaza, most days before the war in Beit Hanoun were simple. Ne’man headed out each morning to work as a taxi driver. Majida got their daughters off to school. Their youngest, Lana, had started first grade. Hoda, the 18-year-old, was in her first year at university. The eldest, Balsam, just had her first baby.
Majida spent much of her day doing housework — her face lights up when she talks about her kitchen, the center of family life.
Ne’man had planted the garden with a grapevine and covered the roof with potted flowers. Watering them in the evenings was a soothing ritual. Then, the family and neighbors would sit on the front stoop or the roof to chat.
“The area would always smell nice,” he said. “People would say we have perfume because of how beautiful the flowers are.”
Oct. 7: The attack
On the morning of Oct. 7, the family heard Hamas rockets firing and news of the militants’ attack into southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 kidnapped.
The Abu Jarads knew that the Israeli response would be swift and that their house, only about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the border fence with Israel, would be on the front line.
By 9 a.m., Ne’man and Majida, their six daughters, and Ne’man’s sister packed up what they could and fled, as the Israeli military issued one of its first evacuation orders.
“It makes no sense to be stubborn and stay,” Majida said. “It is not about one person. I am part of a family and have girls.”
Oct. 7-13: Staying with Majida’s parents
Like many, the family tried, at first, to stay close to home. They went to stay with Majida’s parents, in Beit Lahiya about a kilometer (.6 miles) away.
“The place was very comfortable, to be honest. I felt like I was at home,” Majida said. “But we were living in fear and terror.”
Already, Beit Lahiya was being heavily bombarded. Over the six days they were there, at least nine Israeli strikes hit the town, killing dozens, according to the conflict monitor Airwars. Entire families were killed or wounded under the rubble of their homes.
As the explosions got closer, shrapnel pierced water tanks at Majida’s parents’ home. Windows shattered as the family huddled inside.
It was time to move again.
Oct. 13-15: Refuge at a hospital
When they arrived at Al-Quds hospital, the family saw for the first time the scale of displacement.
The building and its grounds were packed with thousands of people. All around northern Gaza, families took refuge in hospitals, hoping they’d be safe.
The family found a small space on the floor, barely enough room to spread their blanket amid the frantic medical staff struggling with the wounded.
It was a black night and there were strikes, Majida remembers. “The martyrs and wounded were strewn on the floor,” she said.
The day after they arrived, a strike smashed into a house a few hundred meters away, killing a prominent doctor and some two dozen members of his family, many of them children.
The Israeli military ordered all civilians to leave northern Gaza, setting in motion a wave of hundreds of thousands of people heading south across Wadi Gaza, the stream and wetlands that divide the north from the rest of the strip.
The family joined the exodus.
Oct. 15-Dec. 26: A cramped school
The family walked 10 kilometers (6 miles) until they reached the UN-run Girls’ Preparatory School in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Every classroom and corridor was packed with families from the north. Majida, the daughters and Ne’man’s sister found a tiny space in a classroom already housing more than 100 women and children. For privacy in the cramped conditions, Ne’man moved in with the men in tents outside, in the schoolyard.
This was their home for more than 10 weeks. Majida and the girls slept curled up on the floor, without enough space even to extend their legs. As winter set in, there weren’t enough blankets.
The bathrooms were the worst part, Majida said. Only a few toilets served thousands of people. Getting a shower was a miracle, she said. People went weeks unable to bathe. Skin diseases ran rampant.
Every day, the daughters went at dawn to wait in line at the few bakeries still working and came back in the afternoon, sometimes with only one flatbread. One day, Ne’man and his daughters walked 5 kilometers (3 miles) to the town of Deir Al-Balah, looking for drinkable water.
“If it wasn’t for the kind people in Deir Al-Balah who took pity on us and gave us half a gallon, we could have returned with nothing,” Ne’man said.
As strikes continued, the family decided to go as far as possible, trekking 20 kilometers (12 miles) to Rafah, at Gaza’s southernmost end.
Dec. 26-May 14: Life in a tent
The Abu Jarads weren’t the only ones: As Israeli evacuation orders ate away at more and more of Gaza, nearly half of the population crammed into Rafah.
Here, the family had their first taste of living in a tent.
They set up amid the massive sprawl of tens of thousands of tents on Rafah’s outskirts, near UN aid warehouses known as “the barracks.”
“In the winter, it was hell, water drenched us,” Majida said. “We slept on the ground, nothing under us, and no covers.”
They had no money to buy food in the markets, where prices soared. The youngest girls got sick with colds and diarrhea, and there was no nearby pharmacy to buy medicine. The family survived completely off UN handouts of flour and other basics.
“To buy one tomato or cucumber and find it in the tent was like a dream,” Ne’man said.
Like so many others, they’d believed Rafah was the last safe place in Gaza.
It was not.
In the first week of May, Israel ordered the evacuation of all of Rafah. Then its troops pushed into the city. Bombardment intensified.
Ne’man and Majida tried to stay as long as possible. But an airstrike hit nearby, he said, killing four of Ne’man’s cousins and a young girl.
May 16-Aug. 16: “Humanitarian zone”
Palestinians who’d packed into Rafah — more than 1 million — all streamed out again, fleeing the Israeli offensive.
They scattered across southern and central Gaza. New tent cities filled beaches, fields, empty lots, schoolyards, cemeteries, even dumpsites – any open space.
The Abu Jarads moved by foot and donkey cart until they reached a former amusement park known as Asdaa City. Now its Ferris wheel stood above a landscape of tents stretching as far as the eye could see.
Here, in Muwasi, a barren area of dunes and fields along the coast, Israel had declared a “humanitarian zone” – though there was little aid, food or water.
Every amenity once taken for granted was a distant memory. Now the kitchen was a pile of sticks for kindling and two rocks for setting a pot over the fire. No shower, only the occasional bucket of water. Soap was too expensive. Only a draped sheet separated them from their neighbors. Everything was filthy and sandy. Large spiders, cockroaches and other insects crept into the tent.
Aug. 16-26: Fleeing to the sea
Even the “humanitarian zone” was unsafe.
A raid by Israeli troops less than a kilometer (half-mile) away forced Majida and Ne’man to uproot their family once more. They headed toward the Mediterranean coast, not knowing where they’d stay.
Fortunately, they said, they found some acquaintances.
“God bless them, they opened their tent for us and let us live with them for 10 days,” Ne’man said.
Late August: Moving again, no end in sight
When they returned to Muwasi, the Abu Jarads found their tent had been robbed – their food and clothes, all gone.
Since then, the weeks blur together. The family finds survival itself loses meaning in a conflict that seems to have no end.
Food has become even harder to find as supplies entering Gaza drop to their lowest levels of the war.
Israeli drones buzz overhead constantly. The mental strain wears on everyone.
One day, Ne’man said, his youngest daughter, Lana, told him, “You stopped loving me. Because now when I come near you, you say you are fed up and tell me to stay away.”
He kept telling her, “No, darling, I love you. I just can’t bear it all.”
They all dream of home. Ne’man said he learned that his brother’s house next door was destroyed in a strike, and his own home was damaged. He wonders about his flowers. He hopes they survived — even if the house is gone.
The difference between then and now, Majida said, is “the difference between heaven and earth.”
Far from the warmth and affection of home, the Abu Jarads feel themselves surrendering to despair.
“We are jealous,” Majida said. “Jealous of who? Of the people who were killed. Because they found relief while we are still suffering, living horrors, torture and heartbreak.”


Thousands around the world protest Middle East war as Oct 7 anniversary nears

Thousands around the world protest Middle East war as Oct 7 anniversary nears
Updated 06 October 2024
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Thousands around the world protest Middle East war as Oct 7 anniversary nears

Thousands around the world protest Middle East war as Oct 7 anniversary nears
  • 40,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched in London
  • Protesters oppose Israel’s Gaza actions, worry about spreading conflict

PARIS/WASHINGTON: Thousands of protesters took to the streets in major cities around the world on Saturday demanding an end to bloodshed in Gaza and the wider Middle East as the start of Israel’s war in the Palestinian enclave approaches its first anniversary.
About 40,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through central London while thousands gathered in Paris, Rome, Manila, Cape Town and New York City. Demonstrations were also held near the White House in Washington, protesting US support for its ally Israel in military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.
Protesters at Times Square in New York City wore the black-and-white keffiyeh scarf and chanted slogans like: “Gaza, Lebanon you will rise, the people are by your side.” They held banners demanding an arms embargo against Israel.
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.
“Unfortunately, in spite of all our good will, the Israeli government does not take any notice, and they just go ahead and continue their atrocities in Gaza, now also in Lebanon and in Yemen, and also probably in Iran,” said protester Agnes Kory in London.
“And our government, our British government, unfortunately is just paying lip service and carries on supplying weapons to Israel,” she added.
In Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, at least 1,000 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on Sunday morning near the US embassy demanding that Washington stop supplying weapons to Israel.
In London, counter-demonstrators waved Israeli flags as pro-Palestinian marchers walked by. There were 15 arrests on the sidelines of the protests, according to police, who did not specify whether those detained were from either group.
In Rome, police fired tear gas and water cannons after clashes broke out. Around 6,000 protesters defied a ban to march in the city center ahead of the Oct. 7 anniversary of Hamas’ attack.
In Berlin, a protest drew about 1,000 demonstrators with Palestinian flags, who chanted: “One Year of Genocide.”
German demonstrators also criticized what they called police violence against pro-Palestinian protesters. Israel supporters in Berlin protested against rising antisemitism. Scuffles broke out between police and pro-Palestinian protesters.
Over the past year, the scale of the killing and destruction in Gaza has drawn some of the biggest global protests in years, including in the US, that saw weeks of pro-Palestinian college campus encampments.
Advocates have raised concerns over alarming antisemitic and Islamophobic rhetoric in some protests and counter-protests related to the conflict. Rights advocates have warned about rising threats against Muslims and Jews around the world.
Israel’s supporters have expressed offense over some slogans that they say question Israel’s right to exist as a nation. Pro-Palestinian protesters point to violence such as an incident in which a mob in California attacked an encampment of demonstrators in April.
The war in Gaza has spread through the region, drawing in Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. Israel has sharply escalated a campaign in recent weeks in Lebanon that has killed hundreds, wounded thousands and displaced over a million. Israel says it is attempting to dismantle Lebanese Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.
Iran launched a barrage of missiles against Israel this week to which Israel has not yet responded. Israeli operations have also escalated in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
In Paris, Lebanese-French protester Houssam Houssein said: “We fear a regional war, because there are tensions with Iran at the moment, and perhaps with Iraq and Yemen.” Houssein added: “We really need to stop the war because it’s now become unbearable.”
Israel has faced wide international condemnation over its actions in Gaza, and now over its bombarding of Lebanon. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his government is acting to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas and Washington says it supports Israel’s right to self-defense.
US government agencies warned on Friday that the anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks may motivate individuals to engage in violence. Officials in some states, including New York, raised security measures out of caution.
In Manila, activists clashed with anti-riot police after they were blocked from holding a demonstration in front of the US embassy in the Philippine capital against Washington’s support for Israel.
International diplomacy backed by the US has so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Hamas wants an agreement that ends the war while Israel says fighting can end only when Hamas is eradicated.


Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election

Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
Updated 06 October 2024
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Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election

Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
  • Three years after a sweeping power grab by Saied, the election is seen as a closing chapter in Tunisia’s experiment with democracy
  • After rising to power in a landslide in 2019, Saied, now 66, led a sweeping power grab that saw him rewrite the constitution

TUNIS: Tunisia holds a presidential election Sunday with no real opposition to incumbent Kais Saied, widely tipped to win as his most prominent critics, including a key contender, are behind bars.
Three years after a sweeping power grab by Saied, the election is seen as a closing chapter in Tunisia’s experiment with democracy.
The North African country had prided itself for more than a decade for being the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings against dictatorship.
Polling stations open at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) and close at 6 p.m. (1700 GMT). Preliminary results should come no later than Wednesday but may be known earlier, according to ISIE, the electoral board.
In the lead-up to polling day, there have been no campaign rallies or public debates — and nearly all of the campaign posters in city streets have been of Saied.
With little hope for change in a country mired in economic crisis, the mood among much of the electorate has been one of resignation.
“We have nothing to do with politics,” Mohamed, a 22-year-old who gave only his first name for fear of retribution, told AFP in Tunis.
Neither he nor his friends planned to vote, he said, because they believed it was “useless.”
After rising to power in a landslide in 2019, Saied, now 66, led a sweeping power grab that saw him rewrite the constitution.
A burgeoning crackdown on dissent ensued, and a number of Saied’s critics across the political spectrum were jailed, sparking criticism both at home and abroad.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has said that more than “170 people are detained in Tunisia on political grounds or for exercising their fundamental rights.”
Jailed opposition figures include Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Islamist-inspired opposition party Ennahdha, which dominated political life after the revolution.
Also detained is Abir Moussi, head of the Free Destourian Party, which critics accuse of wanting to bring back the regime that was ousted in 2011.

ISIE said about 9.7 million people are expected to turn out, but the near certainty of a Saied win and the country’s mounting hardships have inspired little to no eagerness to vote.
The International Crisis Group think tank said on Friday that “the president’s nationalist discourse and economic hardship” have “corroded any enthusiasm ordinary citizens might have felt about the election.”
“Many fear that a new mandate for Saied will only deepen the country’s socio-economic woes, as well as hasten the regime’s authoritarian drift,” it said.
Voters are being presented with almost no alternative after ISIE barred 14 hopefuls from standing in the race, citing insufficient endorsements among other technicalities.
Hundreds of people protested in the capital on Friday, marching along a heavily policed Habib Bourguiba Avenue as some demonstrators bore signs denouncing Saied as a “Pharaoh manipulating the law.”
Standing against him Sunday are former lawmaker Zouhair Maghzaoui, a supporter of the power grab Saied staged in 2021, and Ayachi Zammel, a little-known businessman who has been in jail since his bid was approved by ISIE last month.
Zammel currently faces more than 14 years in prison on accusations of having forged endorsement signatures to enable him to stand in the election.
In a speech on Thursday, Saied called for a “massive turnout to vote” and usher in what he called an era of “reconstruction.”
He cited “a long war against conspiratorial forces linked to foreign circles,” accusing them of “infiltrating many public services and disrupting hundreds of projects” under his tenure.
The International Crisis Group said that while Saied “enjoys significant support among the working classes, he has been criticized for failing to resolve the country’s deep economic crisis.”
 


At least 24 killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque and school

At least 24 killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque and school
Updated 45 min 59 sec ago
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At least 24 killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque and school

At least 24 killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque and school
  • Israeli military says the target once served as the ‘Shuhada Al-Aqsa’ Mosque but was being as Hamas command and control center
  • Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all of the enclave’s 2.3 million people

CAIRO: At least 24 people were killed and 93 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes targeted a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday morning, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.
The strikes on the mosque and the school, near the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, came as the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas in the enclave approaches its first anniversary.
In its own statement, the Israeli military said it conducted “precise strikes on Hamas terrorists” who were operating within command and control centers embedded in Ibn Rushd School and 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 Hamas 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