Young Palestinian girl killed when Israeli police fire at suspected attackers in West Bank unrest

An Israeli border guard stands at the scene of a reported car-ramming attack at the Ras Bidu checkpoint near the Israeli settlement of Givat Zeev, between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on January 7, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 07 January 2024
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Young Palestinian girl killed when Israeli police fire at suspected attackers in West Bank unrest

  • Israeli police said the ramming took place at a checkpoint near the Palestinian village of Biddu, just northwest of Jerusalem

JERUSALEM: Israeli police on Sunday opened fire at a pair of suspected attackers who rammed their car into a West Bank checkpoint, fatally shooting a young Palestinian girl in an adjacent vehicle, according to police and medical officials.
The two suspects were also shot, while a young police officer was lightly hurt. The Sunday evening incident came hours after nine people were killed in other unrest in the occupied territory, which has experienced a surge of violence since Israel’s war against Hamas erupted on Oct. 7.
Israeli police said the ramming took place at a checkpoint near the Palestinian village of Biddu, just northwest of Jerusalem.
Security camera footage showed a white car plowing into a pair of Israeli police at the checkpoint. Police then chase after the vehicle, opening fire.
Police said a man and woman inside the car were shot, but a girl in a van in front of them was shot as well. The girl, who was reported to be 3 or 4 years old, was pronounced dead by Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service.
Police said a preliminary investigation found that “during the rapid response of the officers toward the terrorists’ vehicle, the vehicle with the child may have been affected.” They promised a “thorough investigation.”
The conditions of the suspected attackers was not immediately known, but the rescue service said a female officer in the paramilitary border police was lightly wounded.
Earlier on Sunday, a man driving a car with Israeli license plates was fatally shot at a busy intersection in the West Bank, hours after a violent confrontation elsewhere left seven Palestinians and a border policewoman dead.
The victim in the drive-by shooting was later identified as a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem. The assailants presumably mistook him for an Israeli because of the license plates. Palestinian militants have carried out scores of shooting attacks against Israelis in the West Bank over the years, and the military described Sunday’s shooting as such an incident.
The Israeli army said security forces were searching the area for the shooter. Israeli media reported that security forces found an abandoned car that was likely used to carry out the attack, and the suspect fled on foot.
Hours earlier, a deadly confrontation erupted when Israeli security forces were on patrol to search for roadside bombs in Jenin, a town and adjacent urban refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
A roadside bomb exploded near a vehicle of the paramilitary border police, killing a policewoman and wounding three others, police said.
An Israeli military helicopter targeted Palestinians in the area who were throwing explosives at Israeli vehicles and extracted the Israeli forces, the Israeli army said. Seven Palestinians were killed in the airstrike, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Mujahhid Nazal, a doctor at nearby clinic, said he heard a “strong explosion” and rushed to the scene. “It was a really dire situation, seven young men were lying on the ground,” he said.
At a funeral for six of those killed in Jenin, four of the men were wrapped in the green flags of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has been locked in a war with Israel in Gaza for the past three months. The two others were covered by the Palestinian flag and the yellow banner of the Fatah movement, a Hamas rival.
The latest events followed a dramatic surge in deadly military raids and increase in restrictions on Palestinian residents across the West Bank during the Israel-Hamas war.
Violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the territory has also reached record highs, according to the United Nations.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed 330 Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas’ cross-border attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 were taken hostage.
Most of the Palestinians were killed during shootouts in the West Bank that the Israeli military says began during operations to arrest Palestinian gunmen.


Father in intensive care after nine children killed in Israeli strike on Gaza

Updated 5 sec ago
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Father in intensive care after nine children killed in Israeli strike on Gaza

GAZA/CAIRO: The father of nine children killed in an Israeli military strike in Gaza over the weekend remains in intensive care, said a doctor on Sunday at the hospital treating him.
Hamdi Al-Najjar, himself a doctor, was at home in Khan Younis with his 10 children when an Israeli air strike occurred, killing all but one of them. He was rushed to the nearby Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza where he is being treated for his injuries.
Abdul Aziz Al-Farra, a thoracic surgeon, said Najjar had undergone two operations to stop bleeding in his abdomen and chest and that he sustained other wounds including to his head.
“May God heal him and help him,” Farra said, speaking by the bedside of an intubated and heavily bandaged Najjar.
The Israeli military has confirmed it conducted an air strike on Khan Younis on Friday but said it was targeting suspects in a structure that was close to Israeli soldiers.
The military is looking into claims that “uninvolved civilians” were killed, it said, adding that the military had evacuated civilians from the area before the operation began.
According to medical officials in Gaza, the nine children were aged between one and 12 years old. The child that survived, a boy, is in a serious but stable condition, the hospital has said.
Najjar’s wife, Alaa, also a doctor, was not at home at the time of the strike. She was treating Palestinians injured in Israel’s more than 20-month war in Gaza against Hamas in the same hospital where her husband and son are receiving care.
“She went to her house and saw her children burned, may God help her,” said Tahani Yahya Al-Najjar of her sister-in-law.
“With everything we are going through only God gives us strength.”
Tahani visited her brother in hospital on Sunday, whispering to him that she was there: “You are okay, this will pass.”
On Saturday, Ali Al-Najjar said that he rushed to his brother’s house after the strike, which had sparked a fire that threatened to collapse the home, and searched through the rubble. “We started pulling out charred bodies,” he said.
In its statement about the air strike, the Israeli military said Khan Younis was a “dangerous war zone.”
Practically all of Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians have been displaced after more than 20 months of war.
The war erupted when Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, killing around 1,200, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 more.
The retaliatory campaign, that Israel has said is aimed at uprooting Hamas and securing the release of the hostages, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, Gazan health officials say.
Most of them are civilians, including more than 16,500 children under the age of 18, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Iraq’s water reserves lowest in 80 years: official

Updated 25 May 2025
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Iraq’s water reserves lowest in 80 years: official

  • Iraqi spokesperson of the Water Resources Ministry Khaled Shamal says the country hasn't seen such a low reserve in 80 years
  • Iraq is considered by the United Nations to be one of the five most impacted countries by climate change

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s water reserves are at their lowest in 80 years after a dry rainy season, a government official said Sunday, as its share from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers shrinks.
Water is a major issue in the country of 46 million people undergoing a serious environmental crisis because of climate change, drought, rising temperatures and declining rainfall.
Authorities also blame upstream dams built in neighboring Iran and Turkiye for dramatically lowering the flow of the once-mighty Tigris and Euphrates, which have irrigated Iraq for millennia.
“The summer season should begin with at least 18 billion cubic meters... yet we only have about 10 billion cubic meters,” water resources ministry spokesperson Khaled Shamal told AFP.
“Last year our strategic reserves were better. It was double what we have now,” Shamal said.
“We haven’t seen such a low reserve in 80 years,” he added, saying this was mostly due to the reduced flow from the two rivers.
Iraq currently receives less than 40 percent of its share from the Tigris and Euphrates, according to Shamal.
He said sparse rainfall this winter and low water levels from melting snow has worsened the situation in Iraq, considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change.
Water shortages have forced many farmers in Iraq to abandon the land, and authorities have drastically reduced farming activity to ensure sufficient supplies of drinking water.
Agricultural planning in Iraq always depends on water, and this year it aims to preserve “green spaces and productive areas” amounting to more than 1.5 million Iraqi dunams (375,000 hectares), said Shamal.
Last year, authorities allowed farmers to cultivate 2.5 million dunams of corn, rice, and orchards, according to the water ministry.
Water has been a source of tension between Iraq and Turkiye, which has urged Baghdad to adopt efficient water management plans.
In 2024, Iraq and Turkiye signed a 10-year “framework agreement,” mostly to invest in projects to ensure better water resources management.


Israeli strikes kill 23 in Gaza, including a journalist and rescue service official

Updated 25 May 2025
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Israeli strikes kill 23 in Gaza, including a journalist and rescue service official

  • Israeli fire kills at least 23 people in Gaza
  • Israel controls 77 percent of Gaza Strip, Hamas media office says

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 23 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, including a local journalist and a senior rescue service official, local health authorities said.
The latest deaths in the Israeli campaign resulted from separate Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the south, Jabalia in the north and Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, medics said.
In Jabalia, they said local journalist Hassan Majdi Abu Warda and several family members were killed by an airstrike that hit his house earlier on Sunday.
Another airstrike in Nuseirat killed Ashraf Abu Nar, a senior official in the territory’s civil emergency service, and his wife in their house, medics added.
There was no immediate comment by the Israeli military.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said that Abu Warda’s death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to 220.
In a separate statement, the media office said Israeli forces were in control of 77 percent of the Gaza Strip, either through ground forces or evacuation orders and bombardment that keeps residents away from their homes.
The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said in separate statements on Sunday that fighters carried out several ambushes and attacks using bombs and anti-tank rockets against Israeli forces operating in several areas across Gaza.
On Friday the Israeli military said it had conducted more strikes in Gaza overnight, hitting 75 targets including weapons storage facilities and rocket launchers.
Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas militants’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people by Israeli tallies with 251 hostages abducted into Gaza.
The conflict has killed more than 53,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the coastal strip. Aid groups say signs of severe malnutrition are widespread.


Israeli military says it intercepted missile from Yemen

Updated 25 May 2025
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Israeli military says it intercepted missile from Yemen

  • Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have continued to fire missiles at Israel in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza

CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel.
Sirens sounded in several areas in the country, the Israeli military said earlier.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have continued to fire missiles at Israel in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Most of the group’s missile have been intercepted or have fallen short.
The Houthis did not immediately comment on the latest missile launch.


Syria to help locate missing Americans

Updated 25 May 2025
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Syria to help locate missing Americans

DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities have agreed to help the United States locate and return Americans who went missing in the war-torn country, a US envoy said on Sunday.
“The new Syrian government has agreed to assist the USA in locating and returning USA citizens or their remains. The families of Austin Tice, Majd Kamalmaz, and Kayla Mueller must have closure,” US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack wrote on X.