GAZA: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that an Israeli operation in Khan Yunis killed 70 people and wounded more than 200, after the military warned it would “forcefully operate” in the area.
The military warning affected the eastern Khan Yunis sector of the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in southern Gaza and sent thousands of Palestinians fleeing.
The military said it would act to curb rocket fire in the area. Khan Yunis had already seen heavy fighting earlier this year.
The latest incident comes nine days after the health ministry said 92 people were killed in a strike on Al-Mawasi, when Israel said it was targeting Hamas’s commander.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and has launched intense military operations in areas of Gaza that it previously had declared free of the militants.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure to reach a truce and hostage-release deal, was on his way to Washington to address the US Congress.
Netanyahu will meet US President Joe Biden, who has pushed him to agree to a ceasefire, more than nine months into the Gaza war ignited by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attacks on Israel.
In late June Netanyahu had said the war “in its intense phase” was about to end.
The evacuation order for the Al-Mawasi area came just two months after the military directed Palestinians there for their own safety.
“Due to the Israeli occupation’s attacks and massacres in Khan Yunis governorate from the early hours of this morning until now, 70 people have been martyred and more than 200 wounded,” the Gaza health ministry said.
The Israeli military did not offer comment on the toll, when asked by AFP.
But in a statement, the military said its fighter jets and tanks “struck and eliminated terrorists in the area.”
It said forces targeted more than “30 terror infrastructure” sites in Khan Yunis. Israeli warplanes also hit a weapons storage facility, observation posts, tunnel shafts and structures used by Hamas militants, it added.
Facing yet another displacement, Palestinians filled the dusty streets of Khan Yunis with cars, motorbikes, donkey-drawn carts, and on foot, carrying what belongings they could.
Hassan Qudayh said his family fled in “panic.”
“We were happily making breakfast for our children, as we had been safe for a month, only to be stunned by shells, warning leaflets and martyrs in the streets,” he told AFPTV.
“This is the 14th or 15th time we’ve been displaced.
“Enough! We’ve been suffering for 10 months.”
Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 44 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
The relentless fighting has plunged Gaza into a severe humanitarian crisis.
Yussef Abu Taimah from Al-Qarara in Khan Yunis said his family went to the humanitarian zone but found no space.
“Even the sidewalks are full of people and tents. We are tired and fed up. Enough of this displacement and migration.”
Months of intermittent talks for the first ceasefire and hostage-prisoner swap since November have yielded little progress.
Netanyahu will meet Biden on Tuesday and deliver a landmark speech to Congress on Wednesday, amid unprecedented strains between Israel and its ally the United States.
The Israeli leader has repeatedly resisted pressure from the Biden administration to accept a truce, which far-right members of his coalition opposes.
Washington fears a voter backlash over the mounting civilian war toll in Gaza, while protests by anti-government demonstrators and families of hostages in Israel are pressuring Netanyahu at home.
“Never before has the atmosphere been so fraught,” said Steven Cook, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“There is clearly tension in the relationship, especially between the White House and the Israeli prime minister,” Cook said in a commentary.
The visit comes with the Gaza war again fueling regional violence.
Israel on Saturday attacked Yemen for the first time, in retaliation for a deadly drone strike on Tel Aviv by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
There were also further exchanges of fire between Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and the Israeli military at the weekend, as tensions remained high along the border.
An Israeli delegation will travel to Doha on Thursday to discuss new demands for a Gaza truce and hostage-prisoner exchange, a source with knowledge of the talks said.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been working to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas.
Gaza health ministry says dozens killed, after Israel evacuation order
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Gaza health ministry says dozens killed, after Israel evacuation order
- The Palestinians were killed by tank salvoes in the town of Bani Suhaila and other towns fringing the eastern side of Khan Younis, with the area also bombarded by air
- “It is like doomsday,” one resident, who only identified himself as Abu Khaled, said
Israel strikes Yemen’s Sana’a airport, ports and power stations
- Houthis said that multiple air raids targeted an airport, military air base and a power station in Yemen
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said it struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Thursday, including Sana’a International Airport and three ports along the western coast.
Attacks hit Yemen’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations as well as military infrastructure in the ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib, Israel’s military added.
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel in what they describe as acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli attacks on the airport, Hodeidah and on one power station, were reported by Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthis.
More than a year of Houthi attacks have disrupted international shipping routes, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys that have in turn stoked fears over global inflation.
Israel has instructed its diplomatic missions in Europe to try to get the Houthis designated as a terrorist organization.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Monday over Houthi attacks against Israel, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said on Wednesday.
On Saturday, Israel’s military failed to intercept a missile from Yemen that fell in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, injuring 14 people.
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”