Gaza rescuers exhume dozens of bodies from Al-Shifa Hospital

Gaza rescuers exhume dozens of bodies from Al-Shifa Hospital
Palestinian civil defense workers uncover corpses buried in the grounds of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Thursday. (AFP)
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Updated 14 March 2025
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Gaza rescuers exhume dozens of bodies from Al-Shifa Hospital

Gaza rescuers exhume dozens of bodies from Al-Shifa Hospital
  • The Palestinians medical facility is now largely in ruins following multiple Israeli assaults during the deadly war

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency reported that its crews had exhumed 48 bodies on Thursday from the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital, once Gaza’s biggest medical facility but now largely in ruins following multiple Israeli assaults during the war.

The agency has carried out similar work in the past to return remains to their families if they can be identified or, failing that, to remove them and give them a proper burial elsewhere.

Rescuers handed over 38 bodies after they were identified by their relatives, who took them to be reinterred in other cemeteries, agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said on Thursday.

“The other 10 exhumed bodies were handed over to the forensic department at the Ministry of Health for identification,” he said.

Bassal added that around 160 bodies remained buried within the hospital complex and that the process of exhumation would continue for several days.

AFP footage showed rescuers digging in parts of the courtyard and removing white bags reportedly containing human remains, which were then wrapped in blankets and carried away.

Gaza resident Mohammed Abu Asi, who identified the body of his brother, had come to the hospital to receive the remains.

“It’s like experiencing the war all over again. Recovering my brother’s body feels as though we are burying him today — the pain and the wound have reopened,” he said.

Another Gaza resident, Suha Al-Sharif, came to the site hoping to find her son’s body.

“I know what my son was wearing. That’s why I came. God willing, I will find him,” she said.

“I want to find him. I’m a mother — I am exhausted and do not know where my son is.”

Hospitals in Gaza, particularly Al-Shifa, have been repeatedly targeted by Israeli forces since the start of the war, following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Gaza health workers have previously discovered bodies at Al-Shifa Hospital.

Last year, the UN Security Council expressed “deep concern” after reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies in or near hospitals in Gaza.

The Oct. 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, according to official Israeli figures.

During the attack, militants took 251 people hostage, 58 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has since killed at least 48,524 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures reliable.


Hezbollah ‘will not let anyone disarm’ it, says chief

Updated 41 sec ago
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Hezbollah ‘will not let anyone disarm’ it, says chief

Hezbollah ‘will not let anyone disarm’ it, says chief
Qassem said: “We must cut this idea of disarmament from the dictionary“

BEIRUT: Hezbollah “will not let anyone disarm” it, the Lebanese group’s leader Naim Qassem said Friday, as the United States presses Beirut to compel the Iran-backed movement to hand over its weapons.
“We will not let anyone disarm Hezbollah or disarm the resistance” against Israel, Qassem said in remarks on a Hezbollah-affiliated TV channel. “We must cut this idea of disarmament from the dictionary.”

Israel army says killed another Hezbollah militant in south Lebanon strike

Israel army says killed another Hezbollah militant in south Lebanon strike
Updated 18 April 2025
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Israel army says killed another Hezbollah militant in south Lebanon strike

Israel army says killed another Hezbollah militant in south Lebanon strike
  • “A Hezbollah terrorist was struck and eliminated by the IDF (military),” the military said

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said it killed a member of Hezbollah in a strike in south Lebanon on Friday evening, after announcing the killing of another operative from the Lebanese armed group earlier in the day.
“Earlier this evening, a Hezbollah terrorist was struck and eliminated by the IDF (military) in the area of Ayta Al-Shab in southern Lebanon,” the military said in a statement. It earlier said it had killed another militant in the area of Sidon.


Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza as ceasefire efforts stall

Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza as ceasefire efforts stall
Updated 18 April 2025
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Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza as ceasefire efforts stall

Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza as ceasefire efforts stall
  • Defense Minister Israel Katz repeated that Israel intended to achieve its war aims
  • “The IDF is currently working toward a decisive victory in all arenas,” he said

JERUSALEM: Israeli airstrikes hit about 40 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past day, the military said on Friday, hours after Hamas rejected an Israeli ceasefire offer that it said fell short of its demand to agree a full end to the war.
Last month the Israeli military broke off a two-month truce that had largely halted fighting in Gaza and has since pushed in from the north and south, seizing almost a third of the enclave as it seeks to pressure Hamas into agreeing to release hostages and disarm.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he would make a special statement on Saturday evening but gave no detail on what it would be about.
Palestinian health authorities said that at least 43 people were killed in strikes on Friday, adding to more than 1,600 deaths since Israel resumed airstrikes in March.
The military said troops were operating in the Shabura and Tel Al-Sultan areas near the southern city of Rafah, as well as in northern Gaza, where it has taken control of large areas east of Gaza City.
Egyptian mediators have been trying to revive the January ceasefire deal that broke down when Israel resumed airstrikes and sent ground troops back into Gaza, but there has been little sign the two sides have moved closer on fundamental issues.
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
But he dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza.
On Friday, Defense Minister Israel Katz repeated that Israel intended to achieve its war aims.
“The IDF is currently working toward a decisive victory in all arenas, the release of the hostages, and the defeat of Hamas in Gaza,” he said in a statement.
The ceasefire offer it made through Egyptian mediators includes talks on a final settlement to the war but no firm agreement.
Katz also said this week that troops would remain in the buffer zone around the border that now extends deep into Gaza and cuts the enclave in two, even after any settlement.


‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum

‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum
Updated 18 April 2025
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‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum

‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum
  • Bombs tore through homes, fighters took over the streets and hundreds of thousands scrambled to escape
  • Since the war broke out, the paramilitaries have been notorious for taking over and looting homes, selling the contents or taking it for themselves

KHARTOUM: It had been nearly two years since AFP journalist Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali set foot in his home in war-torn Khartoum, after the sound of children playing in the street gave way to the fearsome fire of machine guns.
Sudan’s once-peaceful capital awoke to the sound of bombs and gunfire on April 15, 2023 as war broke out between its two most powerful generals — army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Bombs tore through homes, fighters took over the streets and hundreds of thousands scrambled to escape — among them Abdelmoneim, his wife, his son and three daughters.
Since then they have been displaced five times — fleeing each time the front line closed in.
Eventually the 59-year-old journalist sent his family to safety in another African country while he settled down to work alone from Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Then last month he was able to briefly return to his home in Khartoum North during a reporting trip escorted by the army after it recaptured the city.
He found his beloved neighborhood, known as Bahri, abandoned.
“The whole place is cloaked in silence, no grocery store chit-chats, no boisterous games of football on the corner, nothing,” he said.
“The last time I was here, the neighbors were all in the street saying goodbye, praying for each other’s safety, promising we would meet again soon.”
Now their doors hung ajar, beds dragged out onto the street, apparently by RSF fighters who used them to sleep in the open air.
Since the war broke out, the paramilitaries have been notorious for taking over and looting homes, selling the contents or taking it for themselves.
When he got to his landing, Abdelmoneim braced himself for what he would find inside.
“It was like an earthquake had hit. The furniture was upside-down and thrown around, pieces shattered on the ground,” he said.
He clambered slowly from room to room, taking in the damage.
The couch was pocked with burn marks where the fighters had put out cigarette after cigarette.
His daughters’ closets were ripped open and emptied of every last dress.
And on the floor of his office, lying among the tattered remains of his library, was a photo of his wedding to his wife Nahla, with her image torn out.
“I don’t get what they have against my books and my wedding photos,” he said.
“I knew they had stolen furniture. I couldn’t imagine they would destroy everything else.”
In March, the army recaptured Khartoum, to the joy of millions of displaced Sudanese anxious to return to their homes.
“But my girls say they never want to come back,” Abdelmoneim said.
“How can they ever forget sleeping huddled together in the living room, terrified by the sound of every air strike?“
Abdelmoneim shudders at the thought of the horrors they have seen since.
“When we were leaving Khartoum, there were bodies lying in the street and an old man standing over them, trying to keep a plastic sheet in place.
“When I stopped to ask him if he was okay, he said, ‘I’m trying to keep the dogs away.’ I wish my kids had never heard that.”
For seven months, Abdelmoneim tried to wait out the fighting in Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, hoping against hope they could go home.
“The moment I realized this wouldn’t end for years was when the war came to Wad Madani,” he said.
Again they took everything they could carry, and again they joined a wave of hundreds of thousands of people running away, this time on foot, heading east.
The veteran journalist and his wife made the painful choice to separate the family — she and the children would go to another country; and he would go to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, home to the United Nations, the army-aligned government and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Abdelmoneim, like countless Sudanese caught in the war’s crossfire, has lost family members, his life savings and any hope for the future.
“This war has taken everything from us,” he said.
“And everything they haven’t taken, they’ve destroyed.”
For years he had been building up a tiny homestead on the outskirts of Khartoum, lined with fruit trees and a few simple crops he could tend when he retired. The RSF destroyed it in their rampage.
His family’s home and land, in the agricultural state of Al-Jazira, were looted and cut off from power and water — his relatives left starving and powerless to defend themselves against the RSF’s predations.
Now both Al-Jazira and Khartoum are under army control but the war, and the suffering it has wrought, is far from over.
Tens of thousands have been killed and more than 12 million uprooted, including almost four million who fled to other countries.
Hundreds of thousands are returning to areas recaptured by the army, choosing destitution at home over displacement, but most of these areas still lack clean water, electricity and health care.
Famine still stalks Sudan, with around 638,000 people already in famine and eight million on the brink of mass starvation.
The country remains divided, and the RSF — in control of nearly all of the western region of Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south — has not given up the fight.
In recent weeks, the paramilitaries have killed hundreds of people in famine-stricken displacement camps, while RSF chief Dagalo has announced a rival administration to rule over the ashes.
For many like Abdelmoneim, even their modest dreams now seem impossible.
“If this war ends tomorrow, all I want is to be somewhere quiet and safe with my family, farming in peace.”


Iraqi and Syrian leaders meet in Qatar, marking significant first encounter

Iraqi and Syrian leaders meet in Qatar, marking significant first encounter
Updated 18 April 2025
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Iraqi and Syrian leaders meet in Qatar, marking significant first encounter

Iraqi and Syrian leaders meet in Qatar, marking significant first encounter
  • Meeting brokered by Qatar, with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani present

CAIRO: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani met on Thursday in Qatar with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, the first encounter between the two leaders, Iraqi and Syrian state news agencies reported.
The meeting was brokered by Qatar, with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani present. It came ahead of Sharaa’s expected attendance at the Arab Summit in Baghdad on May 17.
In January, Sharaa was named as interim president and pledged to form an inclusive transitional government that would build up the Syrian Arab Republic’s gutted public institutions and run the country until elections, which he said could take up to five years to hold.
Syria issued a constitutional declaration, designed to serve as the foundation for the interim period led by Sharaa. The declaration kept a central role for Islamic law and guaranteed women’s rights and freedom of expression.
During Thursday’s meeting, Al-Sudani called for the beginning of a comprehensive political process and the protection of social, religious, and national diversity in Syria, especially after an attack on Alawites last month.
Hundreds of Alawites were killed in Syria’s western coastal region in apparent retribution for a deadly ambush on Syria’s new security forces by armed loyalists to toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad, an Alawite.
The Iraqi prime minister also stressed the importance of the new Syrian government taking serious steps to combat Daesh militants.
He said progress made on these issues could help in building growing relations between Baghdad and Damascus.
Both leaders agreed to respect the sovereignty of the two countries and reject all kinds of foreign interference.