Residents of Gaza Strip cautioned against helping Israel with protests

Residents of Gaza Strip cautioned against helping Israel with protests
Paramedics assist an injured Palestinian to exit an ambulance upon arrival at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. (File/AFP)
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Updated 28 March 2025
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Residents of Gaza Strip cautioned against helping Israel with protests

Residents of Gaza Strip cautioned against helping Israel with protests

CAIRO: Palestinian groups threatened punishment on Thursday for “collaborators” furthering Israeli goals after the first substantial protests against the war in Gaza and Hamas’ rule.

Hundreds of Palestinians have rallied in recent days in north and central Gaza, some chanting “Hamas out” in a rare show of opposition to the group whose October 2023 raid on Israel triggered a devastating offensive in the enclave.

More demonstrations, which Israel’s government has applauded, were being planned on Thursday.

A statement by the “Factions of the Resistance,” an umbrella group including Hamas, threatened punishment for leaders of the “suspicious movement,” which Palestinians took to mean the street marches.

“They persist in blaming the resistance and absolving the occupation, ignoring that the Israeli extermination machine operates nonstop,” it said.

“Therefore, these suspicious individuals are as responsible as the occupation for the bloodshed of our people and will be treated accordingly.”

Hamas officials have said people have the right to protest, but rallies should not be exploited for political ends or to exempt Israel from blame for decades of occupation, conflict, and displacement in Palestinian territories.

Some protesters said they took to the streets to voice rejection of continued war, adding that they were exhausted and lacked basics like food and water.

“We are not against the resistance. We are against war. Enough wars, we are tired,” said a resident of Gaza City’s Shejaia neighborhood, which saw protests on Wednesday.

“You can’t call people collaborators for speaking up against wars, for wanting to live without bombardment and hunger,” he added via a chat app.

Videos on Wednesday, whose authenticity Reuters could not verify, showed protests in Shejaia in the north where the rallies began and in the central Gaza areas of Deir Al-Balah, indicating the protests were spreading.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the rallies showed Israelis’ decision to renew the military offensive in Gaza after a ceasefire was working.

Hamas police, the group’s enforcers, are again off the streets.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz urged Gaza residents to keep expressing their discontent.

“Learn from the residents of Beit Lahia,” he wrote on X, referring to the first protest. “Just as they did, demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza and the immediate release of all Israeli hostages — this is the only way to stop the war.”

A Palestinian official with a militant group said protests were allowed — but not cooperation with Israel.

“Those suspicious figures try to exploit legitimate protests to demand an end to the resistance, which is the same goal as Israel’s,” he told Reuters via a chat app.


Israel says intercepted missile fired from Yemen

Updated 45 sec ago
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Israel says intercepted missile fired from Yemen

Israel says intercepted missile fired from Yemen
A missile launched from Yemen was intercepted by the air force, said a military statement

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it intercepted on Friday a missile launched from Yemen toward its territory, after reporting that sirens sounded in several areas.

“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted” by the air force, the military said in a statement.

Israel strike kills one in south Lebanon

Israel strike kills one in south Lebanon
Updated 9 min 20 sec ago
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Israel strike kills one in south Lebanon

Israel strike kills one in south Lebanon
  • Health ministry said an Israeli strike on a vehicle in Baraachit resulted in one dead
  • Israel’s military said it had “eliminated the personnel officer for Hezbollah’s Bint Jbeil sector“

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on southern Lebanon on Friday killed one person, authorities said, with the Israeli military identifying the slain man as an official with militant group Hezbollah.

Israel has repeatedly struck Lebanon despite a November ceasefire that sought to end over a year of hostilities with Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The Lebanese health ministry said Friday that “an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the village of Baraachit resulted in one dead.”

The Israeli military said it had “eliminated the personnel officer for Hezbollah’s Bint Jbeil sector,” near the Israeli border.

The man “was involved in efforts to rehabilitate the terrorist organization in the Bint Jbeil area of southern Lebanon and operated to recruit terrorists during the war,” a military statement said.

On Thursday, Israel said it had struck Hezbollah weapons depots and a rocket launcher, and “eliminated a Hezbollah terrorist” in Lebanon’s south.

Under the November truce, Hezbollah was to withdraw its fighters north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving Lebanon’s army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region.

Israel was to withdraw its troops from Lebanon but has kept them in five areas it deems strategic.


Paramilitary attacks kill 30 in Sudan village

Paramilitary attacks kill 30 in Sudan village
Updated 17 min 29 sec ago
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Paramilitary attacks kill 30 in Sudan village

Paramilitary attacks kill 30 in Sudan village
  • The group added that the RSF also stormed major medical facilities in the city, expelling patients and using hospitals to treat wounded paramilitary fighters

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed at least 30 civilians in a two-day assault on a village in the country’s western region of Kordofan, a war monitor said Friday.

In recent months, as the war between the paramilitary troops and the regular army roared into its third year, Kordofan has emerged as a key battlefront, with the paramilitaries seeking to consolidate their control in the west after losing the capital Khartoum.

The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the war, said paramilitary fighters attacked the village of Brima Rasheed on Wednesday and Thursday, killing three civilians in the first raid and 27 others the following day.

It added in a statement that the dead included women and children.

FASTFACTS

• In recent months, as the war between the paramilitary troops and the regular army roared into its third year, Kordofan has emerged as a key battlefront.

• The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the war, said paramilitary fighters attacked the village of Brima Rasheed on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Emergency Lawyers said the paramilitary troops’ “indiscriminate killing” of civilians constituted “a serious violation” of international law.

Casualty figures are nearly impossible to independently verify, with most health facilities shut down and large swaths of Sudan inaccessible to journalists.

The monitor said sporadic clashes were also reported between paramilitary fighters and armed civilians in Brima Rasheed village, near the RSF-held city of En Nahud in West Kordofan state — a key transit point once used by the army to send reinforcements further west.

The Emergency Lawyers said that in recent days violence has spread across En Nahud, with reports of dozens of civilians killed and residential areas attacked.

The group added that the RSF also stormed major medical facilities in the city, expelling patients and using hospitals to treat wounded paramilitary fighters.

Those who resisted were beaten or detained, the Emergency Lawyers said.

Meanwhile, the UN said Friday that more than 1.3 million people who fled the fighting in Sudan have headed home, pleading for greater international aid to help returnees rebuild shattered lives.

Over a million internally displaced people have returned to their homes in recent months, UN agencies said.

A further 320,000 refugees have crossed back into Sudan this year, mainly from neighboring Egypt and South Sudan.

While fighting has subsided in the “pockets of relative safety” to where people are beginning to return, the situation remains highly precarious, the UN said.

In a joint statement, the UN’s IOM migration agency, UNHCR refugee agency and UNDP development agency called for an urgent increase in financial support to fund the recovery as people begin to return.

It said humanitarian operations were “massively underfunded.”

Sudan has 10 million IDPs, including 7.7 million forced from their homes by the current conflict, they said.

Over 4 million have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

Sudan is “the largest humanitarian catastrophe facing our world and also the least remembered,” the IOM’s regional director Othman Belbeisi, speaking from Port Sudan, told a media briefing in Geneva.

He said most of the returns (71 percent) had been to Al-Jazira state, while 8 percent had been to Khartoum.

Other returnees were mostly heading for Sennar state. Both Al-Jazira and Sennar are located southeast of Khartoum.

With the army controlling Sudan’s center, north and east, and the RSF holding nearly all of the western Darfur region, Kordofan in the south has become the main battleground of the war in recent weeks.

“We expect 2.1 million to return to Khartoum by the end of this year but this will depend on many factors, especially the security situation and the ability to restore services in a timely manner,” Belbeisi said.

He said the “vicious, horrifying civil war continues to take lives with impunity,” imploring the warring factions to put down their guns.

“The war has unleashed hell for millions and millions of ordinary people,” he said.

“Sudan is a living nightmare. The violence needs to stop.”

 

 


Aid groups sue Belgium to do more to stop Israel’s war in Gaza

Aid groups sue Belgium to do more to stop Israel’s war in Gaza
Updated 24 min 3 sec ago
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Aid groups sue Belgium to do more to stop Israel’s war in Gaza

Aid groups sue Belgium to do more to stop Israel’s war in Gaza
  • Humanitarian organizations warn of starving children as European powers discuss the crisis

BRUSSELS: Two Belgian aid groups launched a court case on Friday seeking to pressure the country to do more to help stop Israel’s war in Gaza, as the EU struggles to take action.

Belgium has been one of the most outspoken of the EU’s 27 countries in seeking to call out Israel over its devastating military operation in Gaza.

The EU’s top diplomat floated a raft of options after Israel was found to have breached a cooperation agreement with the EU on human rights grounds.

But the bloc’s member states are deeply divided over their approach to the conflict.

FASTFACTS

• The two organizations behind the court case are pushing for Belgium to try to unilaterally halt the EU’s cooperation deal with Israel.

• They are also demanding other steps, including the closure of the country’s airspace for any flights taking military equipment to Tel Aviv.

The two organizations behind the court case — the Belgian-Palestinian Association and National Coordination for Peace and Democracy — are pushing for Belgium to try to unilaterally halt the EU’s cooperation deal with Israel.

They are also demanding other steps, including the closure of the country’s airspace for any flights taking military equipment to Israel.

“Unless there is a sudden change, the European Union will not be able to suspend the association agreement with Israel,” Vincent Letellier, a lawyer representing the NGOs said — alluding to the bloc’s divisions.

“Countries must now be put under pressure by their voters and by the courts.”

A preliminary hearing in the case was held before a judge in Brussels on Friday and full proceedings were scheduled for Sept. 15.

International criticism of Israel is growing over the plight of the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 100 aid and rights groups have warned that “mass starvation” is spreading.

Aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in the enclave as a trio of European powers held an “emergency call” Friday.

Doctors Without Borders said that a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, a day after the UN said one in five children in Gaza City were suffering from malnutrition.

More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza.

Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis, which the World Health Organization has called “man-made.”

Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later.

 


Syria, US and France agree to engage in efforts to support Syria's transition

Syria, US and France agree to engage in efforts to support Syria's transition
Updated 39 min 46 sec ago
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Syria, US and France agree to engage in efforts to support Syria's transition

Syria, US and France agree to engage in efforts to support Syria's transition
  • In joint statement, Syrian, US and French officials said they held “a very frank and productive meeting at a critical moment for Syria”

PARIS: Syria’s foreign minister held frank and productive talks with the United States and France at which they said on Friday they underlined the importance of ensuring the success of Syria’s political transition, unity and territorial integrity.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani, French Foreign Minister Jean Noel Barrot and US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met in Paris, days after a ceasefire halted bloodshed in Syria’s southern province of Sweida.

Hundreds of people were reported killed in the clashes between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes and government forces, and Israel carried out airstrikes to prevent what it said was mass killing of Druze.

In a joint statement, the Syrian, US and French officials said they had held “a very frank and productive meeting at a critical moment for Syria.”

Underlining the importance of engaging quickly to ensure the success Syria’s political transition following the fall of President Bashar Assad, they said they had agreed on the need to ensure Syria’s neighbors do not pose a threat and that Syria does not pose a threat to its neighbors.

They also agreed to support efforts to hold those responsible for violence accountable, the statement said.

Last week’s clashes underlined the challenges interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa faces in stabilising Syria and maintaining centralized rule, despite warming ties with the US and his administration’s evolving security contacts with Israel.