Israel intensifies strikes across Gaza on Palm Sunday, targets hospital in territory’s north

A Palestinian child injured in an Israeli airstrike receives treatment at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP)
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A Palestinian child injured in an Israeli airstrike receives treatment at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP)
Israel intensifies strikes across Gaza on Palm Sunday, targets hospital in territory’s north
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Palestinians transport the bodies people killed when an Israeli strike hit a building in Gaza City's eastern neighbourhood of Shujaiya, in the yard of the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on April 10, 2025. (AFP)
Israel intensifies strikes across Gaza on Palm Sunday, targets hospital in territory’s north
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Palestinians injured in an Israeli airstrike are brought to the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP)
Israel intensifies strikes across Gaza on Palm Sunday, targets hospital in territory’s north
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Palestinian children injured in an Israeli airstrike are brought to the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP)
Israel intensifies strikes across Gaza on Palm Sunday, targets hospital in territory’s north
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Relatives mourn next to the body of a Palestinian killed in an Israeli airstrike, at the morgue of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 13 April 2025
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Israel intensifies strikes across Gaza on Palm Sunday, targets hospital in territory’s north

Palestinian rescuers pull a woman from the rubble after an Israeli strike on the Manoun family home in Jabalia in northern Gaza
  • Separate strike on a car in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza killed at least seven people — six brothers and their friend
  • Their father, Ibrahim Abu Mahadi, said his sons worked for a charity that distributes food to Palestinians in Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH: Israel struck a hospital in northern Gaza early Sunday, forcing patients to evacuate as attacks intensified.
The pre-dawn strike hit Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, after Israel issued an evacuation warning, according to Gaza’s ministry of health. One patient, a girl, died during the evacuation because medical staff were unable to provide urgent care, it said.
Strikes on Palm Sunday
The hospital is run by the Diocese of Jerusalem, which condemned the attack in a statement, saying it happened on “Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week, the most sacred week of the Christian year.” Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
Israel said it struck a command and control center used by Hamas at the hospital to plan and execute attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers, without providing evidence. It said prior to the strike, steps were taken to mitigate harm, including issuing warnings, and using precise munitions and aerial surveillance.
In a statement Sunday, Hamas denied the allegations that the hospital was used by militants and called for an independent international investigation.
Hours later, a separate strike on a car in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, killed at least seven people — six brothers and their friend — according to staff at the morgue of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies. The brothers, of whom the youngest was 10, were buried in Deir Al-Balah.
Their father, Ibrahim Abu Mahadi, said his sons worked for a charity that distributes food to Palestinians in Gaza. “For what sin were they killed?” he said.
Associated Press reporters saw the mangled, bloodied car after the attack as relatives wept over the bodies.
Other strikes in the southern city of Khan Younis killed at least three people, according to staff at Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies.
The Israeli military also said they targeted another command and control center in the area of Deir Al-Balah when many Hamas militants were present and planning to carry out an attack against Israeli soldiers. This was not connected to the strike on the car in the same area, which the army said it was looking into.
In the last 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said that 11 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.
The war started after Hamas killed 1,200 people during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack, mostly civilians, and took 250 people captive, many of whom were eventually freed in ceasefire deals.
More than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have so far been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, according to the health ministry there, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count but says more than half of the dead are women and children.
Israel expands across Gaza
The strikes came hours after Israel’s defense minister said that military activity would rapidly expand across Gaza and that people would have to evacuate from “fighting zones.” Israel also announced Saturday the completion of the Morag corridor, cutting off the southern city of Rafah from the rest of Gaza, with the military saying it would soon expand “vigorously” in most of the small coastal territory.
Israeli authorities have vowed to pressure Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages, 24 believed to be alive, and accept proposed new ceasefire terms.
The director of Al-Ahli Hospital, Dr. Fadel Naim, said they were warned of the attack before it was struck. In a post on X, he wrote that the emergency room, pharmacy and surrounding buildings were severely damaged, impacting more than 100 patients and dozens of medical staff.
The health ministry said the strike destroyed the ward for outpatients and laboratories and damaged the emergency ward.
Images of the aftermath showed the hospital’s caved-in cement roof, surrounded by debris. Dr. Munir Al-Boursh, the health ministry’s director general called the evacuation frightening, with people carried out into the streets in hospital beds.
“It was very scary for the patients ... we did not know what happened,” he said. The health ministry said patients have since been transferred to three other hospitals in Gaza City, including Shifa, Al-Quds and the Red Crescent Field Hospital.
The aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians said this was the fifth attack on the hospital since the war began.
Medical facilities often come under fire in wars, but combatants usually depict such incidents as accidental or exceptional, since hospitals enjoy special protection under international law. In its 18-month campaign in Gaza, Israel has stood out by carrying out an open campaign on hospitals, besieging and raiding them, some several times, as well as hitting multiple others in strikes while accusing Hamas of using them as cover for its fighters.
Last month Israel struck Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis city, the largest in southern Gaza, killing two people and wounding others and causing a large fire, the territory’s health ministry said. The facility was overwhelmed with dead and wounded when Israel ended the ceasefire with a surprise wave of airstrikes.


EU pressing Israel to improve Gaza humanitarian situation, top diplomat says

EU pressing Israel to improve Gaza humanitarian situation, top diplomat says
Updated 11 July 2025
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EU pressing Israel to improve Gaza humanitarian situation, top diplomat says

EU pressing Israel to improve Gaza humanitarian situation, top diplomat says
  • EU’s diplomatic service presented 10 options for political action against Israel after it found “indications” Israel breached human rights obligations under pact
  • Foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas says the options were prepared in response to member states that want stronger pressure on Israel to rectify suffering of civilians in Gaza

KUALA LUMPUR: The European Union is seeking ways to put pressure on Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, its top diplomat said, as member states weighed action against Israel over what they see as potential human rights violations.
The EU’s diplomatic service on Thursday presented 10 options for political action against Israel after saying it found “indications” last month that Israel breached human rights obligations under a pact governing its ties with the bloc.
In a document prepared for EU member countries and seen by Reuters, the options included major steps such as suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement — which includes trade relations — and lesser steps such as suspending technical projects.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Friday the options were prepared in response to member states that wanted stronger pressure on Israel to rectify the suffering of civilians in Gaza’s now 21-month-old war.
“Our aim is not to punish Israel in any way,” she said after meeting with Asian foreign ministers in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, amid growing global jitters arising from US President Donald Trump’s tariff offensive.
“Our aim is to really improve the situation on the ground (in Gaza), because the humanitarian situation is untenable.”
EU members have voiced concern over the large number of civilian casualties and mass displacement of Gaza’s inhabitants during Israel’s war against Hamas militants in the enclave, and alarm about restrictions on access for humanitarian aid.
Kallas said on Thursday Israel had agreed to expand humanitarian access to Gaza, including increasing the number of aid trucks, crossing points and routes to distribution hubs.
She also said negotiations with the US on a trade deal to avoid high tariffs threatened by Trump were ongoing, and stressed that the EU did not want to retaliate with counter-levies on US imports.
Trump has said the EU could receive a letter on tariff rates by Friday, throwing into question the progress of talks between Washington and the bloc on a potential trade deal.
“We have of course possibilities to react, but we don’t want to retaliate. We don’t want a trade war, actually,” Kallas said.


Lebanese president rules out normalization with Israel

Lebanese president rules out normalization with Israel
Updated 45 min 33 sec ago
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Lebanese president rules out normalization with Israel

Lebanese president rules out normalization with Israel
  • Joseph Aoun calls on Israel to withdraw from the five points near the border it still occupies in southern Lebanon
  • He expressed hope for peaceful relations with Israel in the future

BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun ruled out normalization between his country and Israel on Friday, while expressing hope for peaceful relations with Beirut’s southern neighbor, which still occupies parts of southern Lebanon.

Aoun’s statement is the first official reaction to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar’s statement last week in which he expressed his country’s interest in normalizing ties with Lebanon and Syria.

Aoun “distinguished between peace and normalization,” according to a statement shared by the presidency.

“Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment. As for the issue of normalization, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy,” the president said in front of a delegation from an Arab think tank.

Lebanon and Syria have technically been in a state of war with Israel since 1948, with Damascus saying that talks of normalization were “premature.”

The president called on Israel to withdraw from the five points near the border it still occupies. Israel was required to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon under a November ceasefire seeking to end its war with Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Aoun said that Israeli troops in Lebanon “obstruct the complete deployment of the army up to the internationally recognized borders.”

According to the ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah must pull its fighters north of the Litani River, around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border with Israel, leaving the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the area.

The United States has been calling on Lebanon to fully disarm Hezbollah, and Lebanese authorities sent their response to Washington’s demand this week.

The response was not made public, but Aoun stated that Beirut was determined to “hold the monopoly over weapons in the country.”

The implementation of this move “will take into account the interest of the state and its security stability to preserve civil peace on one hand, and national unity on the other,” hinting that Hezbollah’s disarmament will not be done through force.

Hezbollah, a powerful political force in Lebanon, is the only non-state actor to have officially retained its weaponry after the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war in 1990, as parts of southern Lebanon were still under Israeli occupation at the time.

The Lebanese group was heavily weakened following its year-long hostilities with Israel, which escalated into a two-month war in September.


UN reports nearly 800 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks

UN reports nearly 800 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks
Updated 11 July 2025
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UN reports nearly 800 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks

UN reports nearly 800 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks
  • Killings took place both at aid points run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and near humanitarian convoys run by other relief bodies
  • GHF says UN figures are 'false and misleading' and denies killings took place at its sites

GENEVA: The UN rights office said on Friday it had recorded at least 798 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and near convoys run by other relief groups.

The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.

After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians trying to reach the GHF’s aid hubs in zones where Israeli forces operate, the United Nations has called its aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.

“(From May 27) up until the seventh of July, we’ve recorded 798 killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, and 183 presumably on the route of aid convoys,” UN rights office (OHCHR) spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a regular media briefing in Geneva.

The GHF, which began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May after Israel lifted an 11-week-old aid blockade, told Reuters on Friday the UN figures were “false and misleading.” It has repeatedly denied that deadly incidents have occurred at its sites.

“The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys,” a GHF spokesperson said.

The OHCHR said it bases its figures on a range of sources such as information from hospitals in the Gaza Strip, cemeteries, families, Palestinian health authorities, NGOs and its partners on the ground.

Most of the injuries to Palestinians in the vicinity of aid distribution hubs recorded by OHCHR since May 27 were gunshot wounds, Shamdasani said.

“We’ve raised concerns about atrocity crimes having been committed and the risk of further atrocity crimes being committed where people are lining up for essential supplies such as food,” she said.

Israel has repeatedly said its forces operate near the relief aid sites to prevent supplies falling into the hands of militants it has been fighting in the Gaza war triggered by the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7, 2023.

The GHF said on Friday it had delivered more than 70 million meals to hungry Gaza Palestinians in five weeks, and that other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has previously cited instances of violent pillaging of aid, while the UN World Food Programme said last week that most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by “hungry civilian communities.”

There is an acute shortage of food and other basic supplies 21 months into Israel’s military campaign in during which much of the enclave has been reduced to rubble and most of its 2.3 million inhabitants displaced.


Kurdish PKK militants burn weapons in Iraq to launch disarmament

Kurdish PKK militants burn weapons in Iraq to launch disarmament
Updated 11 July 2025
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Kurdish PKK militants burn weapons in Iraq to launch disarmament

Kurdish PKK militants burn weapons in Iraq to launch disarmament
  • Disarmament ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party from armed insurgency to democratic politics
  • Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said peace efforts with the Kurds would gain momentum after the PKK begin laying down its weapons

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq: Thirty Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants burned their weapons at the mouth of a cave in northern Iraq on Friday, marking a symbolic but significant step toward ending a decades-long insurgency against Turkiye.
Footage from the ceremony showed the fighters, half of them women, queuing to place AK-47 assault rifles, bandoliers and other guns into a large grey cauldron. Flames later engulfed the black gun shafts pointed to the sky, as Kurdish, Iraqi and Turkish officials watched nearby.
The PKK, locked in conflict with the Turkish state and outlawed since 1984, decided in May to disband, disarm and end its separatist struggle after a public call to do so from its long-imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan.
After a series of failed peace efforts, the new initiative could pave the way for Ankara to end an insurgency that has killed over 40,000 people, burdened the economy and wrought deep social and political divisions in Turkiye and the wider region.
President Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped the PKK’s dissolution would bolster Turkish security and regional stability. “May God grant us success in achieving our goals on this path we walk for the security of our country, the peace of our nation, and the establishment of lasting peace in our region,” he said on X.
Friday’s ceremony was held at the entrance of the Jasana cave in the town of Dukan, 60 km (37 miles) northwest of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan region of Iraq’s north.
The fighters, in beige military fatigues, were flanked by four commanders including senior PKK figure Bese Hozat, who read a statement in Turkish declaring the group’s decision to disarm.
“We voluntarily destroy our weapons, in your presence, as a step of goodwill and determination,” she said, before another commander read the same statement in Kurdish.
Helicopters hovered overhead, with dozens of Iraqi Kurdish security forces surrounding the mountainous area, a Reuters witness said.
The ceremony was attended by Turkish and Iraqi intelligence figures, officials of Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government and senior members of Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM party — which also played a key role this year facilitating the PKK’s disarmament decision.
It was unclear when further handovers would take place.
A senior Turkish official said the arms handover marked an “irreversible turning point” in the peace process, while another government source said ensuing steps would include the legal reintegration of PKK members into society in Turkiye and efforts to heal communities and promote reconciliation.

Next steps


The PKK has been based in northern Iraq after being pushed well beyond Turkiye’s southeastern frontier in recent years. Turkiye’s military carries out regular strikes on PKK bases in the region and established several military outposts there.
The end of NATO member Turkiye’s conflict with the PKK could have consequences across the region, including in neighboring Syria where the United States is allied with Syrian Kurdish forces that Ankara deems a PKK offshoot.
Washington and Ankara want those Kurds to quickly integrate with Syria’s security structure, which has been undergoing reconfiguration since the fall in December of autocratic President Bashar Assad. PKK disarmament could add to this pressure, analysts say.
The PKK, DEM and Ocalan have all called on Erdogan’s government to address Kurdish demands for more rights in regions where Kurds form a majority, particularly Turkiye’s southeast where the insurgency was concentrated.
In a rare online video published on Wednesday, Ocalan — whose large image was shown at the weapons ceremony — also urged Turkiye’s parliament to set up a commission to oversee disarmament and manage the broader peace process.
Ankara has taken steps toward forming the commission, while the DEM and Ocalan have said that legal assurances and certain mechanisms were needed to smooth the PKK’s transition into democratic politics.
Omer Celik, spokesman for Erdogan’s AK Party, said the ceremony marked a first step toward full disarmament and a “terror-free Turkiye,” adding this must be completed “in a short time.”
Erdogan has said the disarmament will enable the rebuilding of Turkiye’s southeast.
Turkiye spent nearly $1.8 trillion over the past five decades combating terrorism, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek has said. 

 

 


Gaza civil defense says Israeli forces kill 18

Gaza civil defense says Israeli forces kill 18
Updated 11 July 2025
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Gaza civil defense says Israeli forces kill 18

Gaza civil defense says Israeli forces kill 18
  • At least 10 people shot by Israeli forces while waiting for supplies in the Al-Shakoush area northwest of Rafah, officials in Gaza say
  • Six more people killed in four separate Israeli air strikes in the area of Khan Yunis, in the south of the territory

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed 18 people on Friday, including 10 who were waiting for aid in the south of the war-ravaged territory.
The fresh deaths came as the United Nations said nearly 800 people had been killed trying to access food in Gaza since late May, when Israel began easing a more than two-month total blockade on supplies.
UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said most of the deaths occurred near facilities operated by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Gaza civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir said that 10 people were shot by Israeli forces on Friday while waiting for supplies in the Al-Shakoush area northwest of Rafah, where there are regular reports of deadly fire on aid seekers.
The civil defense reported six more people killed in four separate Israeli air strikes in the area of Khan Yunis, in the south of the territory.
Two drone strikes around Gaza City in the north killed two more people, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
There was no immediate comment on the latest strikes from the Israeli military, which has recently expanded its operations across Gaza.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defense agency and other parties.
A Palestinian speaking to AFP from southern Gaza on condition of anonymity reported ongoing attacks and widespread devastation, with Israeli tanks seen near Khan Yunis.
“The situation remains extremely difficult in the area — intense gunfire, intermittent air strikes, artillery shelling, and ongoing bulldozing and destruction of displacement camps and agricultural land to the south, west and north of Al-Maslakh,” an area to Khan Yunis’s south, said the witness.
Israel’s military said in a statement that its soldiers were operating in the area, dismantling “terrorist infrastructure sites, both above and below ground,” and seizing “weapons and military equipment.”
The civil defense also reported on Friday five people killed in an Israeli strike the previous night on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia Al-Nazla, in northern Gaza.
Nearly all of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during the more than 21-month war, which has created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people living there.
Many have sought shelter in school buildings, but these have repeatedly come under Israeli attack, with the military often saying they were targeting Hamas militants hiding among civilians.