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Gaza violence: 40 killed, more than 200 wounded in relentless Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrage

People gather at the site of a collapsed building in the aftermath of Israeli air strikes on Gaza City on May 11, 2021. (AFP)
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Updated 12 May 2021
Hazem Balousha and Mohammed Abu Zaid
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Gaza violence: 40 killed, more than 200 wounded in relentless Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrage

  • At least 35 people in the Palestinian enclave and 5 in Israel have been killed so far
  • Israel Airports Authority halt take-offs at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport "to allow defense of nation's skies"
Updated 12 May 2021
Hazem Balousha and Mohammed Abu Zaid

GAZA CITY/JERUSALEM/CAIRO: Dozens of people died in relentless Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip and a rocket barrage by Hamas militants on Israeli targets on Tuesday and early Wednesday.

It was the heaviest fighting between the bitter enemies since 2014, and it showed no signs of slowing.

The death toll in Gaza rose to 35 Palestinians, including 10 children, according to the Health Ministry. Over 200 people were wounded.

Five Israelis, including three women and a child, were killed by rocket fire Tuesday and early Wednesday, and dozens of people wounded. 

Israel stepped up its attacks Tuesday night, flattening a high-rise building used by the Hamas militant group and killing at least three militants in their hideouts as Palestinian rockets rained down almost nonstop on the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon.




Israeli firefighter extinguishes a burning vehicle on Tuesday after Hamas launched rockets from Gaza Strip to Ashkelon, at southern Israel. (AFP)

As the death toll mounted, Israel snubbed an offer by Egypt to broker an end to the violence. 

“Egypt extensively reached out to Israel and other concerned countries urging them to exert all possible efforts to prevent the deterioration of the situation,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said. “But we did not get the necessary response.” Instead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to rain more death on Gaza. 

“Both the strength of the attacks and the frequency of the attacks will be increased,” he said, and military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Israel was increasing its forces on the Gaza border.

The US State Department urged restraint on both sides.

Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit said the attacks on Gaza were a “miserable show of force at the expense of children’s blood,” and “Israeli provocations” were an affront to Muslims on the eve of the Eid holiday.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which held an emergency meeting in Jeddah, “praised the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in the occupied city of Jerusalem.”




Burnt vehicles are seen in the town of Holon near Tel Aviv after rockets were launched towards Israel from the Gaza Strip by Hamas. (AFP)

The conflict spread to Gaza after days of protests in occupied East Jerusalem, where hundreds of Palestinians — including worshippers praying in Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site — were injured in a violent Israeli crackdown with stun grenades, tear gas and plastic bullets.
On Monday and Tuesday, Gazans endured a long night and day of bombardment and terror. Some lost their loved ones, others their homes.
Rashad Al-Sayed, 57, who lives on the sixth floor of the Tiba building in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, said the roof of the house collapsed on his family as they tried to sleep after dawn prayers.
From a bed in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, he told Arab News: “It was a harsh night, we could not sleep, and when we decided to sleep, the roof fell on us. Israeli warplanes struck an apartment above my flat on the seventh floor.”
Al-Sayed was slightly injured, but his eldest son, Ahmed, 23, was badly hurt and is in intensive care in the same hospital.




A huge column of smoke billows from an oil facility in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on May 11, 2021, after rockets were fired by the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

Witnesses told Arab News that Israeli warplanes fired four missiles at an apartment on the seventh floor of a tower block during dawn prayers at about 4:30 a.m., causing damage in most of the building, and killing a woman, her 19-year-old disabled son and another man on the floor below.
At midday, an air strike hit a building in the city center, sending terrified residents running into the street, including women and barefoot children. The Islamic Jihad militant group said the strike killed three of its commanders.
A 13-story residential block in the Gaza Strip collapsed on Tuesday night after being hit by an Israeli air strike. Three plumes of thick smoke rose from the tower, its upper stories still intact until it collapsed to the ground. The tower housed an office used by the Hamas political leadership.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 28 people, including 10 children and the woman, had been killed and 152 injured since Monday. Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Kidra said Israel’s “relentless assault” was overwhelming the healthcare system, which has been struggling with COVID-19.
Electricity in the surrounding area went out, and residents were using flashlights.




Flames are seen following an Israeli air strike on Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, on May 11, 2021. (AFP)

Shortly after the attack, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group said they would respond by firing rockets at Tel Aviv.
Air raid sirens and explosions were heard around the city, and the skies were lit up by the streaks of multiple interceptor missiles launched toward the incoming rockets.
Pedestrians ran for shelter, and diners streamed out of Tel Aviv restaurants while others flattened themselves on pavements as the sirens sounded.
Israeli television stations said three people had been wounded in the suburb of Holon.
The Israel Airports Authority said it had halted take-offs at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport “to allow defense of (the) nation’s skies.”
“We are now carrying out our promise,” Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement. “The Qassam Brigades are launching their biggest rocket strike against Tel Aviv and its suburbs, with 130 rockets, in response to the enemy’s targeting of residential towers.”
Hours earlier, Israel had sent 80 jets to bomb Gaza and massed tanks on the border as rocket barrages hit Israeli towns for a second day, deepening a conflict in which at least 28 people in the Palestinian enclave and two in Israel have been killed.
Residents of the block and people living nearby had been warned to evacuate the area around an hour before the air strike, according to witnesses, and there were no reports of casualties two hours after it collapsed.
The most serious outbreak of fighting since 2019 between Israel and armed factions in Gaza was triggered by clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque on Monday.

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The city, holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, has been tense during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, with the threat of a court ruling evicting Palestinians from homes claimed by Jewish settlers adding to the friction.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would step up its strikes on Gaza, an enclave of 2 million people, in response to the rocket attacks.
“Both the strength of the attacks and the frequency of the attacks will be increased,” he said in a video statement.
Within an hour, Israel said it had deployed jets to bomb rocket launch sites in and around Gaza City.Officials said infantry and armor were being dispatched to reinforce the tanks already gathered on the border, evoking memories of the last Israeli ground incursion into Gaza to stop rocket attacks, in 2014.
More than 2,100 Gazans were killed in the seven-week war that followed, according to the Gaza health ministry, along with 73 Israelis, and thousands of homes in Gaza were razed.
On Tuesday, before the block collapsed, the Gaza health ministry said at least 28 Palestinians, including 10 children, had been killed and 152 wounded by Israeli strikes since Hamas on Monday fired rockets toward Jerusalem for the first time since 2014.
Israel’s national ambulance service said two women had been killed in rocket strikes on the southern city of Ashkelon.
The International Committee of the Red Cross urged all sides to step back, and reminded them of the requirement in international law to try to avoid civilian casualties.

Topics: Gaza Israel Jerusalem

Israel builds ‘cyber dome’ against Iran’s hackers

Updated 03 May 2024
AFP
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Israel builds ‘cyber dome’ against Iran’s hackers

  • Israeli cybersecurity agency had thwarted around 800 significant attacks since the Oct. 7 Gaza war erupted
  • But some attacks could not be foiled, including against hospitals in which patient data was stolen
Updated 03 May 2024
AFP

TEL AVIV: Israel’s Iron Dome defense system has long shielded it from incoming rockets. Now it is building a “cyber dome” to defend against online attacks, especially from arch foe Iran.

“It is a silent war, one which is not visible,” said Aviram Atzaba, the Israeli National Cyber Directorate’s head of international cooperation.
While Israel has fought Hamas in Gaza since the October 7 attack, it has also faced a significant increase in cyberattacks from Iran and its allies, Atzaba said.
“They are trying to hack everything they can,” he told AFP, pointing to Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement but adding that so far “they have not succeeded in causing any real damage.”
He said around 800 significant attacks had been thwarted since the war erupted. Among the targets were government organizations, the military and civil infrastructure.
Some attacks could not be foiled, including against hospitals in the cities of Haifa and Safed in which patient data was stolen.
While Israel already has cyber defenses, they long consisted of “local efforts that were not connected,” Atzaba said.
So, for the past two years, the directorate has been working to build a centralized, real-time system that works proactively to protect all of Israeli cyberspace.
Based in Tel Aviv, the directorate works under the authority of the prime minister. It does not reveal figures on its staff, budget or computing resources.
Israel collaborates closely with multiple allies, including the United States, said Atzaba, because “all states face cyber terrorism.”
“It takes a network to fight a network,” he said.

Israel’s arch foe Iran is “an impressive enemy” in the online wars, said Chuck Freilich, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, which is affiliated with Tel Aviv University.
“Its attacks aim to sabotage and destroy infrastructure, but also to collect data for intelligence and spread false information for propaganda purposes,” he said.
Iran has welcomed Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,596 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Regional tensions have soared, particularly after Iran for the first time fired hundreds of missiles directly at Israel last month in retaliation for a deadly Israeli air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
It was the most dramatic escalation yet after a years-long shadow war of killings and sabotage attacks between Israel and Iran.
Freilich argued in a study published in February that Iran was relatively slow to invest in cyberwarfare, until two key events triggered a change.
First, its leaders took note of how anti-government protesters used the Internet as a tool to mobilize support for a 2009 post-election uprising.
In the bloody crackdown that crushed the movement, Iran’s authorities cut access to social media and websites covering the protests.
Then, in September 2010, a sophisticated cyberattack using the Stuxnet virus, blamed by Iran on Israel and the United States, caused physical damage to Tehran’s nuclear program.
Freilich said the attack “demonstrated Iran’s extreme vulnerability and led to a severe national shock.”
Since then, Iran has gained substantial expertise to become “one of the most active countries in cyberspace,” he said

While Israel is considered a major cyber power, Iran was only likely to improve, said Freilich.
He pointed to assistance from Russia and China, as well as its much larger population and an emphasis on cyber training for students and soldiers alike, adding that the trend was “concerning for the future.”
Atzaba insisted that the quantity of hackers is secondary to the quality of technology and the use it is put to.
“For the past two years, we have been developing a cyber dome against cyberattacks, which functions like the Iron Dome against rockets,” he said.
“With cyber dome, all sources are fed into a large data pool that enables a view of the big picture and to invoke a national response in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.”
The Israeli system has various scanners that continuously “monitor Israeli cyberspace for vulnerabilities and informs the stakeholders of the means to mitigate them,” he said.
Israel’s cyber strength relied on close cooperation between the public, private and academic sectors, as well as Israel’s “white hat” hackers who help identify weaknesses.
“We work hand in hand,” he said.

Topics: Israel Iran Iron Dome Hamas Gaza Hezbollah cyber hacking

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Kurds deny torturing detainees in north Syria camps

Updated 03 May 2024
Arab News
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Kurds deny torturing detainees in north Syria camps

  • Rights group alleges cruelty against Daesh militant prisoners and their families
Updated 03 May 2024
Arab News

JEDDAH: Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria on Thursday denied claims by Amnesty International that they tortured Daesh militants and their dependents detained in internment camps.
More than 56,000 prisoners with links to the Islamist militant group are still being held five years after Daesh were driven out of their last territory in Syria. They include militants locked up in prisons, and Daesh fighters’ wives and children in Al-Hol and Roj camps.
Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard said Kurdish authorities had “committed the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment, and probably committed the war crime of murder.”
The semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in northeast Syria said it “respects its obligations to prevent the violation of its laws, which prohibit such illegal acts, and adheres to international law.”

Any such crimes that may have been perpetrated were “individual acts,” it said, and asked Amnesty to provide it with any evidence of wrongdoing by its security forces and affiliates.

“We are open to cooperating with Amnesty International regarding its proposed recommendations, which require concerted regional and international efforts,” it said.
Kurdish authorities said they had repeatedly asked the international community for help in managing the camps, which required “huge financial resources.”

Al-Hol is the largest internment camp in northeast Syria, with more than 43,000 detainees from 47 countries, most of them women and children related to Daesh fighters.

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Hamas is sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks in the latest sign of progress

Updated 03 May 2024
AP
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Hamas is sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks in the latest sign of progress

  • US and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas a proposal -– apparently with Israel’s acceptance — that sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week ceasefire and partial release of Israeli hostages
Updated 03 May 2024
AP

BEIRUT: Hamas said Thursday that it was sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks, in a new sign of progress in attempts by international mediators to hammer out an agreement between Israel and the militant group to end the war in Gaza.

After months of stop-and-start negotiations, the ceasefire efforts appear to have reached a critical stage, with Egyptian and American mediators reporting signs of compromise in recent days. But chances for the deal remain entangled with the key question of whether Israel will accept an end to the war without reaching its stated goal of destroying Hamas.
The stakes in the ceasefire negotiations were made clear in a new UN report that said if the Israel-Hamas war stops today, it will still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed by nearly seven months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza. It warned that the impact of the damage to the economy will set back development for generations and will only get worse with every month fighting continues.
The proposal that US and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas -– apparently with Israel’s acceptance — sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week ceasefire and partial release of Israeli hostages, but also negotiations over a “permanent calm” that includes some sort of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to an Egyptian official. Hamas is seeking guarantees for a full Israeli withdrawal and complete end to the war.
Hamas officials have sent mixed signals about the proposal in recent days. But on Thursday, its supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a statement that he had spoken to Egypt’s intelligence chief and “stressed the positive spirit of the movement in studying the ceasefire proposal.”
The statement said that Hamas negotiators would travel to Cairo “to complete the ongoing discussions with the aim of working forward for an agreement.” Haniyeh said he had also spoken to the prime minister of Qatar, another key mediator in the process.
The brokers are hopeful that the deal will bring an end to a conflict that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, caused widespread destruction and plunged the territory into a humanitarian crisis. They also hope a deal will avert an Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought shelter after fleeing battle zones elsewhere in the territory.
If Israel does agree to end the war in return for a full hostage release, it would be a major turnaround. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack stunned Israel, its leaders have vowed not to stop their bombardment and ground offensives until the militant group is destroyed. They also say Israel must keep a military presence in Gaza and security control after the war to ensure Hamas doesn’t rebuild.
Publicly at least, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that is the only acceptable endgame.
He has vowed that even if a ceasefire is reached, Israel will eventually attack Rafah, which he says is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza. He repeated his determination to do so in talks Wednesday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel on a regional tour to push the deal through.
The agreement’s immediate fate hinges on whether Hamas will accept uncertainty over the final phases to bring the initial six-week pause in fighting — and at least postpone what it is feared would be a devastating assault on Rafah.
Egypt has been privately assuring Hamas that the deal will mean a total end to the war. But the Egyptian official said Hamas says the text’s language is too vague and wants it to specify a complete Israeli pullout from all of Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations.
On Wednesday evening, however, the news looked less positive as Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas official, expressed skepticism, saying the group’s initial position was “negative.” Speaking to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, he said that talks were still ongoing but would stop if Israel invades Rafah.
Blinken hiked up pressure on Hamas to accept, saying Israel had made “very important” compromises.
“There’s no time for further haggling. The deal is there,” Blinken said Wednesday before leaving for the US
An Israeli airstrike, meanwhile, killed at least five people, including a child, in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. The bodies were seen and counted by Associated Press journalists at a hospital.
The war broke out on Oct. 7. when Hamas militants broke into southern Israel and killed over 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, taking around 250 others hostage, some released during a ceasefire on November.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Hamas is believed to still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has wreaked vast destruction and brought a humanitarian disaster, with several hundred thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza facing imminent famine, according to the UN More than 80 percent of the population has been driven from their homes.
The “productive basis of the economy has been destroyed” and poverty is rising sharply among Palestinians, according to the report released Thursday by the United Nations Development Program and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
It said that in 2024, the entire Palestinian economy — including both Gaza and the West Bank -– has so far contracted 25.8 percent. If the war continues, the loss will reach a “staggering” 29 percent by July, it said. The West Bank economy has been hit by Israel’s decision to cancel the work permits for tens of thousands of laborers who depended on jobs inside Israel.
“These new figures warn that the suffering in Gaza will not end when the war does,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said. He warned of a “serious development crisis that jeopardizes the future of generations to come.”
 

Topics: War on Gaza Israel-Hamas war Egypt

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Syria says Israeli strike outside Damascus injures eight troops

Updated 03 May 2024
Reuters
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Syria says Israeli strike outside Damascus injures eight troops

  • A security source said the strike hit a building operated by government forces
  • Defense ministry acknowledged only that the strike caused some material damage
Updated 03 May 2024
Reuters

An Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of Damascus injured eight Syrian military personnel late on Thursday, the Syrian defense ministry said, the latest such attack amid the war in Gaza.

The Israeli strike, launched from the occupied Golan Heights toward “one of the sites in the vicinity of Damascus,” caused some material damage, the Syrian defense ministry said in a statement.
The strike hit a building operated by Syrian security forces, a security source in the alliance backing Syria’s government earlier told Reuters.
The Israeli military said it does not comment on reports in the foreign media.
Israel has for years been striking Iran-linked targets in Syria and has stepped up its campaign in the war-torn country since Oct. 7, when Iran-backed Palestinian militants Hamas crossed into Israeli territory in an attack that left 1,200 people dead and led to more than 250 taken hostage.
Israel responded with a land, air and sea assault on the Gaza Strip, escalated strikes on Syria and exchanged fire with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah across Lebanon’s southern border.
The security source said the location struck in Syria on Thursday sat just south of the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine, where Hezbollah and Iranian forces are entrenched.
But the source said the site struck was not operated by Iranian units or Hezbollah.

Topics: Golan Heights Israel Syria Damascus

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Turkiye halts all trade with Israel, cites worsening Palestinian situation

Updated 02 May 2024
Reuters
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Turkiye halts all trade with Israel, cites worsening Palestinian situation

  • Turkiye’s trade ministry: ‘Export and import transactions related to Israel have been stopped, covering all products’
  • Israel’s FM Israel Katz said that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was breaking agreements by blocking ports to Israeli imports and exports
Updated 02 May 2024
Reuters

ANKARA: Turkiye stopped all exports and imports to and from Israel as of Thursday, the Turkish trade ministry said, citing the “worsening humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories.
“Export and import transactions related to Israel have been stopped, covering all products,” Turkiye’s trade ministry said in a statement.
“Turkiye will strictly and decisively implement these new measures until the Israeli Government allows an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
The two countries had a trade volume of $6.8 billion in 2023.
Turkiye last month imposed trade restrictions on Israel over what it said was Israel’s refusal to allow Ankara to take part in aid air-drop operations for Gaza and its offensive on the enclave.
Earlier on Thursday, Israel’s foreign minister said that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was breaking agreements by blocking ports to Israeli imports and exports.
“This is how a dictator behaves, disregarding the interests of the Turkish people and businessmen, and ignoring international trade agreements,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X.
Katz said he instructed the foreign ministry to work to create alternatives for trade with Turkiye, focusing on local production and imports from other countries. 

Topics: War on Gaza Turkiye Israel Recep Tayyip Erdogan Israel Katz

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