In Turkiye, a vote of confidence for Istanbul’s embattled ex-mayor
In Turkiye, a vote of confidence for Istanbul’s embattled ex-mayor/node/2594627/middle-east
In Turkiye, a vote of confidence for Istanbul’s embattled ex-mayor
People queue to vote during the presidential primaries, with the only candidate of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Ekrem Imamoglu, outside the party headquarters in Ankara on March 23, 2025. (AFP)
In Turkiye, a vote of confidence for Istanbul’s embattled ex-mayor
Of 15 million people who voted for Imamoglu, 13.2 mn were not members of the deposed mayor's opposition CHP party, said Istanbul city hall
The vote was a long-planned primary organized by the main opposition CHP to choose Iits challenger to President Erdogan
Updated 24 March 2025
AFP
ISTANBUL: “We won’t give in to despair,” insisted 38-year-old Aslihan, referring to the massive protests sweeping across Turkiye since the arrest of Istanbul’s popular mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
She was waiting in line to vote in a long-planned primary organized by the main opposition CHP to choose Imamoglu as its presidential candidate.
Following his arrest, the party opened the poll beyond its 1.7 million members to anyone who wanted to vote, turning it into a de facto referendum.
In the end, some 15 million people voted, of whom 13.2 million were not party members, said Istanbul city hall, which organized the vote. It extended voting by three-and-a-half hours because of the turnout.
Widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the 53-year-old’s lightning arrest and jailing has sparked Turkiye’s biggest protests in more than a decade.
Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) and voters of all ages began flocking to vote at 5,600 ballot boxes installed in 81 cities.
But the party said “millions” had turned out, pushing it to extend the closing time from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. due “overwhelming turnout.”
“Whenever there’s a strong opponent (to Erdogan), they are always jailed,” shrugged a 29-year-old voter called Ferhat, who like many, did not want to give his surname.
“There is a dictatorship in Turkiye right now, nothing else, it’s politics in name only.”
“We’ve come to support our mayor,” said her neighbor Kadriye Sevim inside a tent set up outside City Hall, the epicenter of the massive protests since Imamoglu’s March 19 arrest.
“No power has the right to do this to Turkish youth or the people in Turkiye. We will stand against this until the end,” said Ece Nazoskoc, an 18-year-old student.
Similar crowds were seen waiting to vote in Kadikoy, a trendy district on the Asian side of the city, as well as in Kasimpasa, a working-class neighborhood on the Golden Horn estuary where Erdogan spent his childhood.
The scenes were repeated across the country, from the capital Ankara to Diyarbakir in the mainly-Kurdish southeast, and to Thrace in the far northwest near the Greek and Bulgarian borders.
“We all voted, it was like a party! The CHP people manning the ballot boxes said it was really busy with lots of people from other parties,” grinned Sevil Dogruguven, 51, who works in the private sector in the northwestern city of Edirne.
“In the countryside near Thrace, people even came to the town halls to cast their ballots,” she told AFP.
In Ankara, Nurcan Kabacioglu, a retired 57-year-old teacher, was defiant.
“There is no such thing as a hopeless situation, just discouraged people. I never gave up hope,” she said.
Others were feeling a new sense of hope.
“This is the first mass protest since the Gezi protests,” said Aslihan, referring to a small 2013 environmental protest against the destruction of a city park that snowballed into vast nationwide rallies in one of the biggest threats to Erdogan’s rule.
“After Gezi, we got used to the feeling of hopelessness but the injustice we’re seeing now (and the subsequent protests) have given us new hope,” she said.
“I feel much stronger and more hopeful. But I feel this is our last chance,” she told AFP.
Red Cross concerned by drone attacks on critical infrastructure in Sudan
Some 70 percent to 80 percent of hospitals in Sudan were not running and there were concerns cholera could surge
Updated 10 April 2025
Reuters
GENEVA: The Red Cross raised alarm on Thursday at the growing use of drone attacks by warring parties on hospitals, electricity and water infrastructure in Sudan, which it said was contributing to widespread human rights violations.
Some 70 percent to 80 percent of hospitals in Sudan were not running and there were concerns cholera could surge due to damage caused by the war to water infrastructure, the International Committee of the Red Cross told reporters in Geneva.
“A recent drone attack stopped all the electricity provision in an area close to Khartoum, which means critical infrastructure is being damaged,” said Patrick Youssef, the Red Cross’s Regional Director for Africa, in a new report.
“There is a clear increased use of these technologies, drones – to be in the hands of everyone – which increases the impact on the local population and the intensity of attacks,” Youssef said.
After two years of fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, some people are returning to Khartoum after they were forced to flee when war broke out on April 15, 2023 amidst an ongoing power struggle between the army and the RSF ahead of a transition to civilian rule.
Some 12 million people have been displaced by the conflict since 2023.
“We have seen violations of the law left, right and center,” Youssef said, urging the warring parties to allow the Red Cross access so it can offer humanitarian support and document atrocities.
In March, aid groups said that the RSF had placed new constraints on aid deliveries to territories where it was seeking to cement its control. Aid groups have also accused the army of denying or hindering access to RSF-controlled areas.
Both sides in the conflict deny impeding aid.
Israeli minister says France plan to recognize Palestinian state ‘prize for terror’
France plans to recognize a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflic
Updated 10 April 2025
AFP
JERUSALEM: Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that Paris could recognize a Palestinian state by June, saying it would be a “prize” for terrorism.
“A unilateral recognition of a fictional Palestinian state, by any country, in the reality that we all know, will be a prize for terror and a boost for Hamas,” Saar said on X late on Wednesday. “These kind of actions will not bring peace, security and stability in our region closer — but the opposite: they only push them further away.”
France plans to recognize a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday.
“We must move toward recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television.
France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including after the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonizing Israel which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
In Egypt, Macron held summit talks with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
US strikes overnight in Yemen kill at least 3 people, Houthis say
Houthis claim shooting down another American MQ-9 Reaper drone, showing footage of debris supposedly of the fallen UAV
Footage aired by the rebels’ Al-Masirah satellite news channel showed chaotic scenes of people carrying wounded to waiting ambulances
Updated 10 April 2025
AP
DUBAI: Suspected US airstrikes in Yemen overnight into Thursday killed at least three people, while the death toll in an earlier attack rose to 13 dead, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels said. The rebels meanwhile aired footage they said showed the debris left after shooting down yet another American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
The 13 killed in strikes Tuesday night around Hodeida’s Al-Hawak district made it one of the deadliest single incidents in the ongoing American campaign, the rebels said. Another 15 people were wounded. The Houthis described the majority of those killed as women and children, without providing a breakdown.
The area is home to the city’s airport, which the rebels have used in the past to target shipping in the Red Sea.
Since its start, the intense campaign of US airstrikes targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Mideast waters — related to the Israel-Hamas war — has killed over 100 people, according to casualty figures released Wednesday by the Houthis.
Footage aired by the rebels’ Al-Masirah satellite news channel showed chaotic scenes of people carrying wounded to waiting ambulances and rescuers searching by the light of their mobile phones. The target appeared in the footage to be a home in a residential neighborhood, likely part of a wider decapitation campaign launched by the Trump administration to kill rebel leaders.
Early Thursday morning, the Houthis said airstrikes targeting the Al-Sabain District in the south of the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, killed at least three people. The area is home to Al-Sabeen Square and a major mosque that has been a gathering point for months for Houthi demonstrations against the war in the Gaza Strip. Other strikes hit the capital as well.
More airstrikes hit Kamaran Island in the Red Sea, the Houthis said.
The US military’s Central Command, which oversees American military operations, did not acknowledge the strikes. That follows a pattern for the command, which now has authorization from the White House to conduct strikes at will in the campaign that began March 15.
The American military also hasn’t been providing any information on targets hit. The White House has said over 200 strikes have been conducted so far.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking in the Oval Office on Monday during a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warned that America was “not going to relent” in its campaign targeting the Houthis. Oil shipments targeted as US drone reportedly shot down
On Wednesday, the State Department said the US “will not tolerate any country or commercial entity providing support to foreign terrorist organizations, such as the Houthis, including offloading ships and provisioning oil at Houthi-controlled ports.” That likely will further squeeze the rebels, who already have had problems in their territory with bad gasoline destroying vehicle engines.
The Houthis also aired footage of the burning wreckage of what they described as an MQ-9 Reaper drone shot down in Yemen’s Al-Jawaf governorate. One man poked at the debris with a stick as those gathered chanted the Houthis’ slogan: “God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse the Jews; victory to Islam.”
Central Command said it was aware of the report of the shoot down, but declined to answer further.
The Houthis say they shoot down the drones with locally made missiles. The Houthis have surface-to-air missiles — such as the Iranian missile known as the 358 — capable of downing aircraft.
Iran denies arming the rebels, though Tehran-manufactured weaponry has been found on the battlefield and in sea shipments heading to Yemen for the Shiite Houthi rebels despite a United Nations arms embargo.
General Atomics Reapers, which cost around $30 million apiece, can fly at altitudes over 40,000 feet (12,100 meters) and remain in the air for over 30 hours. They have been flown by both the US military and the CIA for years over Afghanistan, Iraq and now Yemen.
The Houthis claim they’ve shot down 22 MQ-9s over the country over the years, with 18 downed during the rebels’ campaign over the Israel-Hamas war.
The US military hasn’t acknowledged the total number of drones it has lost there. US airstrikes under Trump more intense than those under Biden
An AP review has found the new US operation against the Houthis under President Donald Trump appears more extensive than that under former President Joe Biden, as Washington moves from solely targeting launch sites to firing at ranking personnel and dropping bombs on cities.
The new campaign of airstrikes started after the rebels threatened to begin targeting “Israeli” ships again over Israel blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip. The rebels have loosely defined what constitutes an Israeli ship, meaning many vessels could be targeted.
The Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors from November 2023 until January of this year. They also launched attacks targeting American warships without success.
The US campaign shows no signs of stopping, as the Trump administration has linked its airstrikes on the Houthis to an effort to pressure Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program as well.
What really happened to the Palestinian rescue workers killed in Gaza on March 23?
Israeli troops killed 15 medics in the deadliest attack on Red Cross and Red Crescent staff in eight years
Officials claim the rescuers were mistaken for terrorists, but UN agencies want an independent investigation
Updated 10 April 2025
ANAN TELLO
LONDON: Autopsies on 15 Palestinian emergency workers who were killed in Gaza on March 23 revealed they were shot in the upper body with “intent to kill,” according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. On Monday, the organization called for an international investigation into the incident.
The workers had set out in ambulances, a fire truck and a UN vehicle on a rescue mission in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip — only to be discovered buried with their vehicles in what the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, described as a “mass grave.”
International teams led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) dig for bodies of murdered humanitarian workers buried in mass graves by the Israeli military in Gaza. (X: @_jwhittall)
As the day drew to a close, the Palestine Red Crescent Society reported losing contact with its team, which had been dispatched to Rafah’s Al-Hashashin neighborhood to evacuate casualties wounded by an earlier Israeli bombardment.
In a subsequent post on X, the organization said Israeli forces were attacking their ambulances and that several emergency medical technicians had been injured during the operation.
Video That Exposes the Israeli Occupation’s Lies
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has obtained a video from the family of a martyred EMT, found on his mobile phone after his body was recovered from a mass grave in Gaza. He was among 15 ambulance and relief team members… pic.twitter.com/8iWqULxijC
By March 25, two days after their disappearance, the organization said in a statement that nine of its ambulance crew members were still missing “after they were besieged and targeted by Israeli occupation forces in Rafah.”
Similarly, Gaza’s Civil Defense reported that displaced Palestinians sheltering in Tal Al-Sultan — a neighborhood under heavy Israeli bombardment — were struck, and a rescue team sent to assist them was “surrounded by Israeli troops.”
Efforts to secure access for rescue teams through international organizations were reportedly blocked by Israeli authorities. Nearly a week later, on March 30, international teams gained access to the site and uncovered evidence of direct attacks on humanitarian workers.
Contrary to claims by the Israeli military, a video retrieved from the mobile phone of one of the victims showed that the vehicles were clearly marked as ambulances, a fire truck and a UN car. (AFP file photo)
The bodies of all 15 medics and emergency responders were found buried in what appeared to be a mass grave, the AP news agency reported. Their vehicles — clearly marked as ambulances, a fire truck and a UN car — were found mangled and half-buried, apparently by Israeli military equipment.
The victims included eight Red Crescent workers, six members of Gaza’s Civil Defense emergency unit and a staffer from the UN Relief and Works Agency. Ambulance officer Assad Al-Nassasra remains missing.
OCHA said in a statement that all but one body was recovered on March 30; one Civil Defense member’s body was retrieved earlier on March 27 during attempts to access the area.
15 emergency & aid workers in Gaza – from @PalestineRCS, Palestinian Civil Defense and UN - were found buried by their wrecked & well-marked vehicles. Our condolences to their families.⁰⁰They were killed by Israeli forces while trying to save lives. We demand answers & justice. https://t.co/TudYttukQF
The UN agency also stated that “available information indicates that the first team was killed by Israeli forces on 23 March.”
It further noted that additional emergency teams dispatched to rescue their colleagues were also “struck one after another over several hours.” All operations, according to the Civil Defense, took place during daylight hours.
Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense, said Israeli soldiers “handcuffed” the victims’ bodies and “decapitated one of them before executing them, marking a dangerous escalation of crimes against civilians and relief teams.”
"Returning the next day, we were finally able to reach the site and discovered a devastating scene: ambulances, the UN vehicle, and fire truck had been crushed and partially buried," wrote
Jonathan Whittall, OCHA’s head of office for the Occupied Territories, wrote on X. (X: @_jwhittall)
He added: “The occupation directly executed Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defense teams and desecrated the bodies of humanitarian workers before burying them in mass graves.”
The Red Crescent said the workers and their vehicles were clearly marked with medical and humanitarian insignia. The organization accused Israeli forces of killing them “in cold blood.”
Initially, Israel defended its actions by claiming its troops opened fire because the convoy approached “suspiciously” at night without identification or headlights. It also claimed that nine members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were killed in the incident but provided no evidence.
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar reiterated these claims during a press conference, claiming the Israeli Defense Forces “did not randomly attack an ambulance” but rather identified “several uncoordinated vehicles” advancing “suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals.”
The IDF did not randomly attack an ambulance on March 23. Let me walk through what happened step-by-step:
1. Last Sunday, several uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals. IDF troops then… https://t.co/VdtyXd8qj5
“IDF troops then opened fire at the suspected vehicles,” he said, adding that “following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military terrorist, Mohammed Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre, along with eight other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.”
An Israeli military official, briefing journalists over the weekend on condition of anonymity, said troops first fired at a vehicle carrying members of Hamas internal security forces, killing two and detaining another.
Two hours later, at 6 a.m. on March 23, the soldiers “received a report from the aerial coverage that there is a convoy moving in the dark in a suspicious way towards them” and “opened fire from far.”
“They thought they had an encounter with terrorists,” said the official.
On Monday, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said six Hamas militants were among the 15 killed. “What were Hamas terrorists doing in ambulances?” he said.
However, the narrative unraveled after mobile phone footage emerged debunking Israel’s account. A video filmed by Rifaat Radwan, a paramedic killed in the attack, showed the vehicles had their lights on and were clearly marked.
Originally shared by the New York Times, the mobile video begins inside a moving vehicle, capturing a red fire truck and ambulances driving in the dark. Both vehicles and paramedics were clearly marked as humanitarian, and the paramedics wore reflective hi-vis uniforms.
As Radwan and his colleagues arrive and exit their vehicles, a barrage of gunfire erupts without warning and lasts around five minutes. The medic is heard reciting the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith traditionally spoken when death is near.
The 18-minute video also captured Radwan’s final words: “Mom, forgive me. This is the path I chose. I wanted to help people.” Moments later, voices of Israeli soldiers are heard approaching the vehicles.”
Following this revelation, Israel admitted its earlier account was inaccurate and attributed it to errors made by troops involved in the incident.
An IDF official stated during an April 5 press conference that soldiers buried the bodies “to protect them from wild animals” and moved vehicles to clear roads but denied allegations of close-range executions or handcuffing.
Trey Yingst, chief foreign correspondent at the New York Times, said he spoke with the IDF multiple times about the incident and was told “several vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights, or emergency signals.”
Sharing Radwan’s footage on X, he added: “That is clearly not true.”
New video shows Israeli forces open firing on medics in Gaza.
I’ve spoken with the IDF multiple times about this day and was told “several vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights, or emergency signals.”
Likewise, Munther Abed, a surviving paramedic who bore witness to his colleagues’ fate, told the BBC the ambulances had their lights on and denied his colleagues were linked with any militant group.
The IDF promised a “thorough examination” of the incident, saying it wanted to “understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation.”
The footage has drawn widespread condemnation from international observers. UN human rights chief Volker Turk called for an independent investigation into what he described as apparently systematic killings of emergency workers.
“The subsequent discovery of their bodies eight days later in Rafah, buried near their clearly marked destroyed vehicles, is deeply disturbing,” he said in a statement on April 1. “This raises significant questions with regard to the conduct of the Israeli army during and in the aftermath of the incident.”
Stressing that medical personnel must be protected under international humanitarian law, Turk highlighted significant concerns about Israel’s conduct during and after the incident.
He also noted that the incident took place at a moment when “tens of thousands of Palestinians need help while they are reportedly trapped in Tal Al-Sultan, Rafah, with the entire governorate under a displacement order.”
Likewise, the Palestine Red Crescent and Germany, one of Israel’s closest allies in the EU, called for an urgent investigation into the incident.
Germany’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Christian Wagner, said on Monday: “There are very significant questions about the actions of the Israeli army now. An investigation and accountability of the perpetrators are urgently needed.”
Whether or not a thorough probe is carried out is “a question that ultimately affects the credibility of the Israeli constitutional state,” he added.
Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir has ordered a more in-depth investigation into the attack after an initial probe was completed by the military.
Israel's newly appointed armed forces chief, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, visits the Western Wall in the old city of Jerusalem on March 5, 2025. (AFP)
“The chief of staff has instructed a deeper investigation to be conducted and completed in the coming days,” the military said in a statement.
“The preliminary inquiry indicated that the troops opened fire due to a perceived threat following a previous encounter in the area.”
The March 23 incident was not the first time Israel is alleged to have targeted humanitarian or emergency workers, but the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies described this latest attack as the deadliest on its personnel in eight years.
Since the Gaza war was triggered by the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel in 2023, the IDF is reported to have killed more than 100 Civil Defense workers, more than 1,000 health workers, and at least 408 aid workers, including more than 280 UNRWA staff, according to UN figures.
Paramedics transport out of an ambulance some of the bodies of Palestinian first responders, who were killed a week before in Israeli military fire on ambulances, into Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 30, 2025. (AFP)
The latest uptick in violence prompted the heads of six UN agencies on Monday to call for an immediate renewal of the ceasefire, which Israel unilaterally broke, and the resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza, blocked since March 2.
On March 18, Israel renewed its bombardment of Gaza, shattering the fragile ceasefire that had been in place since January. Since then, at least 1,200 Palestinians have been killed in the war-torn enclave, according to local health authorities.
James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, condemned what he described as “unprecedented breaches” of international humanitarian law linked to the resumption of Israeli air and ground operations in Gaza.
Echoing these concerns, IFRC spokesperson Tommaso Della Longa warned that hospitals “are literally overwhelmed” and running out of medicine and medical equipment. A lack of fuel and damage to infrastructure have knocked “more than half” of the Palestine Red Crescent’s ambulance teams out of action, he added.
The IDF began operations in Gaza in retaliation for the unprecedented Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, which left 1,200 people dead, the majority of them civilians, and saw 240 taken hostage, many of them non-Israelis.
Since then, Israel’s military operations against Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in the enclave have killed at least 50,800 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, according to local health officials.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Warrants were also issued for several Hamas officials, who have since been killed in Israeli strikes.
Separately, Israel faces a case at the International Court of Justice, accused of committing genocide, a claim that Israeli officials and their US allies have rejected.
Bombed-out Gaza university becomes refuge for displaced
The families say they took shelter in the university because the UN schools-turned-shelters are already overwhelmed
More than 400,000 Palestinians across Gaza have been displaced by Israeli evacuation orders since it resumed its campaign
Updated 10 April 2025
AP
The main auditorium of the Islamic University of Gaza is a gutted, burned-out wreck. Giant holes have been blasted through its blackened walls. The banks of seats are mangled and twisted.
And now the stage, once the scene of joyous graduation ceremonies, is crowded with the tents of the displaced. The campus has become a refuge for hundreds of families in northern Gaza since Israel broke a ceasefire in March and relaunched the war.
The families say they took shelter in the university because the UN schools-turned-shelters are already overwhelmed. More than 400,000 Palestinians across Gaza have been displaced by Israeli evacuation orders since it resumed its campaign, according to the UN Most have already been displaced multiple times during the war.
Like all of Gaza’s 17 universities and colleges, the Islamic University has been decimated by Israeli bombardment and ground offensives over the past 18 months. Palestinians and several international academic groups have condemned it as “scholasticide,” the systematic destruction of the territory’s educational system.
Any sense that this was once a university is gone.
Families have set up tents in lecture halls and classrooms. They take books from the library and burn them in cooking fires because they have no fuel. Kids run around in gardens reduced to fields of debris and mounds of earth.
Manal Zaanin, a mother of six, has converted a filing cabinet into a makeshift oven to bake pita bread, which she sells to other families. Her children and other relatives lay out the dough on mattresses in one of the classrooms.
Families pool their resources to buy fuel for tractors to bring in large containers of water. A makeshift market has been set up under the archway of the main gate.
Their struggle to survive has worsened because Israel has cut off the entry of food, fuel, medicine and all other goods into Gaza for more than a month, straining the limited supplies of aid agencies on which nearly the entire population relies.
One of the territory’s largest, the Islamic University of Gaza had some 17,000 students before the war, studying everything from medicine and chemistry to literature and commerce. More than 60 percent of its students were women.
The campus has been pummeled by airstrikes and raids by Israeli ground troops. Strikes have killed at least 10 of its professors and deans, including the university president; prominent physicist Sufian Tayeh, who was killed along with his family when their home was bombed; and one of its best known professors, Refaat Alareer, an English teacher who organized workshops for young writers from Gaza.
At Israa University, troops blew up the main buildings in a controlled detonation, leveling them to the ground in January 2024. No campuses are functioning in the territory, though some universities, including the Islamic University of Gaza, conduct limited online courses.
