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Thousands flee as Israel tightens 'stranglehold' around Gaza City

By - Nov 08,2023 - Last updated at Nov 08,2023

Palestinians queue to receive a portion of food at a make-shift charity kitchen in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday (AFP photo)

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestinian Territories — Thousands of Palestinians were fleeing on foot on Wednesday in a surge away from the fighting and intense bombardment in Gaza as Israel said it was tightening the "stranglehold" around Hamas.

People walked south from Gaza City, many with nothing but the clothes they wore.

According to the Hamas-run health ministry in the besieged territory, the Israeli military campaign has killed more than 10,500 people, many of them children.

The pace of Palestinian civilians fleeing south from northern Gaza has accelerated as Israel's air and ground campaign has intensified, according to UN observers.

About 15,000 people fled on Tuesday, compared to 5,000 on Monday and 2,000 on Sunday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, as another surge was under way on Wednesday.

"It was so scary," Ola Al Ghul, among the masses of Gazan civilians displaced in the month-old war between Israel and Hamas, said on Tuesday.

"We held our hands up and we kept walking. There were so many of us, we were holding white flags," she told AFP.

Israel has set an aim of destroying Hamas and said its ground forces were advancing in pursuit of the militants who have a deep network of tunnels and underground bases.

People waving white flags have been fleeing the fighting, while the steadily mounting toll has meant vehicles from donkey-drawn carts to bulldozers have been pressed into transporting the dead.

International concern over the fate of Gaza's civilians, most of whom cannot flee the sealed off territory, has prompted calls for a ceasefire.

G-7 foreign ministers said that they supported "humanitarian pauses and corridors" in the Israel-Hamas war but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.

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'Death and suffering' 

 

Military analysts warned of weeks of gruelling house-to-house fighting ahead in Gaza, with around 30 Israeli soldiers already killed in the offensive.

In densely packed Gaza — where more than 1.5 million people have fled their homes in a desperate search for safety — the suffering is immense.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said an average of 160 children are killed every day in Gaza by the war.

“The level of death and suffering is hard to fathom,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said.

Hamas’s media office said on Telegram that several cemeteries in Gaza had “no more space for burials”, while the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)said most of the territory’s sewage pumping stations were shut.

OCHA says Israel has ordered all 13 hospitals still operational in northern Gaza to evacuate patients.

 

US against re-occupation 

 

Netanyahu has said Israel will assume “overall security” in Gaza after the war ends, while Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, said the prime minister was not referring to any future reoccupation of the territory.

Israel withdrew its troops from the territory, which it captured in the 1967 June War, in 2005.

Key ally Washington said it opposed a long-term occupation of Gaza.

Speaking to reporters after G7 foreign ministers held talks in Japan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken listed what he said were “key elements” in order to create “durable peace and security”.

“The United States believes key elements should include: No forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, not now, not after the war; No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks; No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends,” he said.

In the occupied West Bank on Sunday, Blinken suggested the Palestinian Authority (PA) under president Mahmud Abbas should retake control of Gaza.

The PA exercises limited autonomy in only parts of the West Bank, and Abbas said it could only potentially return to power in Gaza if a “comprehensive political solution” is found for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“All over Gaza, helpless people are losing their family members, homes, and their own lives, while world leaders fail to take meaningful action,” medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said.

In its statement, MSF detailed how a staff member was killed on Monday along with his family in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp when the area was bombed.

Israel has hammered Gaza with more than 12,000 air and artillery strikes and sent in ground forces that have effectively cut it in half.

It has air-dropped leaflets and sent texts ordering civilians in northern Gaza to flee south, but a US official said on Saturday at least 350,000 civilians remained in the worst-hit areas.

 

Hundreds of displaced Sudanese evicted as war rages

By - Nov 08,2023 - Last updated at Nov 08,2023

PORT SUDAN, Sudan — Sudanese police on Wednesday forcibly evicted hundreds of civilians who had been sheltering at a school in the eastern state of Gedaref, eyewitnesses said, as the army and paramilitaries battled in the capital.

A resident, Amal Hussein, said she saw “police cars surround” the school and heard people scream.

“Police came and ordered us to leave the school, based on a decision from the governor, and fired tear gas at us,” Hussein Gomaa, who had been displaced from Khartoum, told AFP.

“We are 770 people who had fled the war in Khartoum and were sheltering in this school,” Gomaa said after fleeing the makeshift displacement camp, where he said hundreds of people “had been receiving aid”.

“We don’t understand why we were driven out,” he said. “Now we’re out in the open with women and children, and we don’t know where to go.”

Gedaref currently hosts 273,000 people who have been uprooted in the conflict between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

According to the United Nations, thousands are being housed in makeshift camps such as schools where food, clean water and healthcare are in short supply.

Barely two hours after they were forced out, Suleiman Mohammed, who had also been taking shelter at the school, said they were again “evacuated from the dormitories” of Gedaref University’s medical school.

“Police said the decision was issued by the governor,” he added.

Since April, forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan — Sudan’s de facto head of state — have been at war with the RSF commanded by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

More than 10,000 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.

After the warring sides failed to agree on a ceasefire in Saudi- and US-brokered talks this week, the fighting continued Wednesday, with a committee of volunteers reporting “intensified clashes” in a densely populated neighbourhood of northern Khartoum.

Out of 4.6 million people internally displaced within Sudan, more than three million people have fled the violence in the capital, according to UN figures.

The country is facing an “unimaginable humanitarian crisis”, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday, with most hospitals shuttered and millions in severe need of aid as the violence continues unabated.

In the vast western region of Darfur, where some of the worst fighting has taken place, the RSF has claimed control of all but one major city.

Their advance amid a communications blackout has triggered renewed fears of ethnically motivated mass killings.

 

Scientists blame climate change for ‘extreme drought’ in Iraq, Iran and Syria

By - Nov 08,2023 - Last updated at Nov 08,2023

The scientists warned that ‘long-lasting severe droughts like these are no longer rare events (AFP photo)

BAGHDAD — The “extreme” drought gripping Iraq, Syria and Iran would not have occurred without climate change caused primarily by burning fossil fuels, scientists said on Wednesday, warning that punishing dry spells will become more intense as the world warms.

High temperatures due to human-caused climate change made the drought “much more likely to happen” — about 25 times more likely in Syria and Iraq and 16 times more likely in Iran, according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group. 

“Human-induced climate change has increased the intensity of such a drought such that it would not have been classified as a drought in a 1.2ºC cooler world,” said the scientists. 

It found that existing vulnerability from “years of conflict and political instability” also reduced people’s ability to respond to the drought, sparking a “humanitarian disaster”. 

The research focused on the period from July 2020 to June 2023 in two regions where impacts have been most severe: Iran, and the basin of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the rivers that cross Syria and Iraq.

Both regions are currently experiencing an “extreme drought” as classified by the US Drought Monitor scale, said the scientists in a statement.

“After quite good rains in 2020 and good harvests, three years of very low rainfalls followed with very high temperatures led to a drought with very severe impacts on agricultural access to potable water,” said co-author Friederike Otto, of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

 

‘Not so optimistic’ 

 

In an online briefing, co-author Mohammad Rahimi from Iran’s Semnan University, called for better resource management. 

“Historically we didn’t have a lot of rain so this is normal for our region, but the increase in temperature is a new topic,” he said. 

Rising temperatures in coming years threaten to evaporate much of the region’s precipitation, according to Rahimi. 

“We anticipate that we will have more evaporation and transpiration from the plants so am not so optimistic for the future,” he added. 

In Iraq, one of the world’s leading oil producers, and in war-torn Syria, AFP journalists regularly observe the repercussions of climate change and the drought’s impacts on the most vulnerable populations. 

Both countries have seen a drastic drop in agricultural production in recent years, particularly among wheat farmers.

Reduced river flows and water pollution have left little catch for fishermen.

 

Water stress 

 

By September 2022, the drought had displaced nearly two million people living in rural areas in Syria, according to the WWA. 

In Iran, water shortages have “led to tensions with neighbouring countries” and soaring food prices, the statement said. 

Conflicts over water are also on the rise in Iraq, where a recent UN report found one in five citizens in the country of 43 million people already suffered from water insecurity. 

High levels of water stress are exacerbated by a multitude of factors, including inefficient irrigation methods, outdated water treatment plants and rapid population growth. 

Key water systems are also increasingly sabotaged during conflicts. 

The scientists warned that “long-lasting severe droughts like these are no longer rare events”. 

Instead, they can be expected to occur once every decade in Syria and Iraq, and twice every decade in Iran.

“With every degree of warming, Syria, Iraq and Iran will become even harsher places to live,” said Rahimi.

UN chief says Gaza becoming 'graveyard for children', urges ceasefire

By - Nov 07,2023 - Last updated at Nov 07,2023

Palestinians pull a child from debris following an Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday (AFP photo)

UNITED NATIONS, United States — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday warned that the bombarded Gaza Strip was becoming a "graveyard for children," as he urged an immediate ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel conflict.

"The unfolding catastrophe makes the need for a humanitarian ceasefire more urgent with every passing hour," he told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.

"The parties to the conflict, and, indeed, the international community,  face an immediate and fundamental responsibility: to stop this inhuman collective suffering and dramatically expand humanitarian aid to Gaza," he said.

"The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity."

Israel's strikes have killed 10,222 people, including more than 4,000 children, in the densely populated and besieged Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry.

Guterres also deplored the killings of media workers. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 36 journalists and media workers have been killed.

"More journalists have reportedly been killed over a four-week period than in any conflict in at least three decades," Guterres said, adding that 89 UN aid workers have also been killed. 

Guterres was formally launching a recently announced $1.2 billion UN humanitarian appeal to help 2.7 million Palestinians over the entire Gaza Strip and parts of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

Aid trucks have been coming into Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah border crossing, but the level remains well below that of before October 7, with Israel saying it needs time for security checks of vehicles. One restriction is that they are not bringing fuel. 

"Without fuel, newborn babies in incubators and patients on life support will die," Guterres said. 

"The way forward is clear. A humanitarian ceasefire — now. All parties respecting all their obligations under international humanitarian law," he said. 

Guterres again voiced alarm about the "clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing". 

"Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law," he said. 

Guterres did not name Israel on Monday. He outraged the country’s leaders on October 24 at a Security Council meeting where he alleged violations of humanitarian law and said that the Hamas attacks “did not occur in a vacuum”, leading Israeli officials to accuse the UN chief of justifying violence. 

 

Security Council stalemate 

 

The UN Security Council, which has yet to pass any text on the conflict, met again on Monday afternoon without a resolution. 

According to diplomatic sources, there is no consensus on whether to call any interruption in fighting a “ceasefire” or “humanitarian pause”.

“We talked about humanitarian pauses and we’re interested in pursuing language on that score,” US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood said after the meeting. “But there are disagreements within the Council about whether that’s acceptable.”

And though all 15 members of the body recognise the “urgent humanitarian need” in Gaza, according to UAE Ambassador Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, “the gaps remain on what is achievable on the ground”.

“Without a cessation of hostilities, or some kind of humanitarian truce that is immediately implemented... far too many more will continue to lose their lives,” she said, adding that the Security Council “feels enormous pressure to reach agreement”.

Hundreds line up in Gaza to flee through Egypt crossing

By - Nov 07,2023 - Last updated at Nov 07,2023

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — Hundreds of Palestinian foreign passport holders waited on Tuesday inside the war-stricken and besieged Gaza Strip to escape through the Rafah crossing with Egypt. 

While most still queued nervously, the first arrivals were seen on the Egyptian side where paramedics transferred an injured woman on a stretcher into an ambulance to rush her to a hospital.

Tuesday was set to mark the fifth day on which Gaza's sole land crossing not controlled by Israel has opened in the past week, to wounded Palestinians as well as foreigners and Palestinian dual nationals. 

AFP video footage from the Gaza side showed hundreds waiting with suitcases, bags and other scant belongings at the Rafah terminal complex. 

"We were suffering just like any Gazan resident, we waited a long time for the crossing to open," said Farid Nawasra, who holds a Russian passport. 

"We were waiting every day for our names to be added to the list, and we hope today that they allow us to pass, as they allowed other foreigners to pass." 

Departures from the Gaza Strip were expected to resume for many more on Tuesday afternoon after 500 people had received authorisation to enter Egypt, Hamas officials said. 

“Every person in Gaza is in danger,” said Myrian Abu Shaban, a resident of Gaza City. “I’m happy that we managed to make it to the border.”

 

S.Sudan floods leave 1.6 million children at risk of hunger — UN

By - Nov 07,2023 - Last updated at Nov 07,2023

Submerged houses in Borna state, South Sudan (AFP photo)

NAIROBI — More than 1.6 million children aged under five will suffer from malnutrition next year in South Sudan, following a surge in waterborne diseases due to flooding, the UN’s World Food Programme said on Monday.

The world’s newest nation has endured deadly conflict, natural disasters, economic malaise and relentless political infighting since it won independence from Sudan in 2011.

As flooding becomes an annual affair in some parts of the country, people living in waterlogged areas have struggled to access food while also grappling with the spread of disease.

“More than 1.6 million children under five years of age are expected to suffer from malnutrition in 2024,” the WFP said.

In Rubkona county, where floodwaters have submerged large tracts of land, forcing entire communities to live on small islands since 2021, the cost of food staples has climbed by more than 120 per cent since April.

The county, which lies in the north of the country, is forecast to face catastrophic levels of hunger by April 2024.

 

‘Hunger emergency’

 

“This is the reality of living on the frontline of the climate crisis,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP’s country director in Juba.

“We’re seeing an extremely concerning rise in malnutrition which is a direct result of living in overcrowded and waterlogged conditions,” she said.

“The spread of waterborne diseases unravels any work humanitarian agencies do in preventing and treating malnutrition and it is young children who are suffering the impact most severely,” she added.

The crisis has been compounded by the return of hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese refugees fleeing Sudan’s brutal war, with WFP warning last month that families were facing “a hunger emergency”.

Since fighting erupted in Sudan in mid-April, more than 10,000 people have lost their lives, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

Multiple truces have failed to stop the violence that has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis engulfing the wider region.

One of the world’s poorest nations, South Sudan has spent nearly half its life at war, with some 380,000 people killed during a five-year civil war between rival leaders who share power today.

The United Nations has repeatedly criticised South Sudan’s leadership for its role in stoking bloodshed, cracking down on political freedoms and plundering public coffers.

South Sudan has large oil reserves but it remains in a “serious humanitarian crisis”, according to the World Bank.

It said in September that about 9.4 million people or 76 per cent of the population were estimated to be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2023.

Hamas says launched 16 rockets from Lebanon at Israel

By - Nov 07,2023 - Last updated at Nov 07,2023

A damaged car and fallen tree are photographed the day after a rocket attack from southern Lebanon on the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel on Monday (AFP photo)

BEIRUT — Hamas fighters on Monday fired 16 rockets from Lebanon towards northern Israel, the Palestinian group's armed wing announced, saying they targeted areas south of the Israeli coastal city of Haifa.

The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said the strikes came "in response to the occupation's [Israel's] massacres and its aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip".

The Israeli army, meanwhile, reported about 30 projectiles had been fired at northern Israel from Lebanon, adding that it fired back at the direction they had been launched from.

Hamas, which is allied with Lebanon's Iran-backed Shiite group Hizbollah, has a number of fighters in south Lebanon and has previously claimed attacks on Israel from there.

Tensions have run high at the border between Israel and Lebanon, which remain technically at war, since the October 7 surprise attack, with Hizbollah and Israel regularly exchanging attacks.

Since October 7, at least 81 people have been killed on the Lebanese side in cross-border skirmishes, according to an AFP tally, including 59 Hizbollah fighters.

Six soldiers and two civilians have been killed on the Israeli side.

 

Health ministry in Gaza says death toll tops 10,000 as Israel steps up war

By - Nov 07,2023 - Last updated at Nov 07,2023

People flee following Israeli air strikes on a neighbourhood in the Al Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Monday, amid ongoing Israeli bombardment of the coastal enclave (AFP photo)

Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine — The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 10,000 people, the health ministry said on Monday after nearly one month of Israeli heavy bombardment of the besieged coastal enclave. 

The total included 292 killed in the overnight barrage which hit two paediatric hospitals and Gaza's only psychiatric hospital, the ministry said.

"These are massacres! They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants, women and children," Mahmud Meshmesh, resident of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, told AFP.

"We have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble," he said as crowds prayed around corpses wrapped in white shrouds.

Ground forces with tanks have flooded the northern half of the Gaza Strip and tightened an encirclement of Gaza City, effectively splitting the territory in two.

Israel’s ally the United States sent its top diplomat Antony Blinken on a whirlwind Middle East tour that wrapped up on Monday in Turkey, where again his host pressed for an Israeli ceasefire, which Washington has declined to endorse.

The heads of major United Nations agencies issued a joint statement also calling for a ceasefire inside the territory of 2.4 million people where an Israeli siege has cut off most water, food and fuel supplies.

“It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now,” the statement said.

The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt reopened on Monday to allow the evacuation of foreigners and dual nationals, the government said, ending a two-day closure prompted by a dispute over the passage of ambulances.

Six ambulances carrying wounded Gazans arrived in Egypt on Monday as evacuations resumed, a border official said.

On his regional tour, Blinken called for “humanitarian pauses” while rejecting Arab countries’ demands for a ceasefire.

After meeting his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan on Monday, Blinken said Washington was working “very aggressively” to expand aid for trapped civilians in Gaza, but he did not provide details before boarding a flight to Japan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was travelling across his country’s remote northeast on Monday, apparently snubbing Blinken.

NATO member Turkey, which is allied to the Palestinians but also has ties with Israel, has said it is recalling its ambassador to Israel and breaking off contacts with Netanyahu.

 

West Bank unrest 

 

The war has exacerbated tensions in the occupied West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces and settlers since it started, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Israeli occupation forces killed four Palestinians in the West Bank on Monday, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.

The Israeli military said on Monday it had arrested Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, 22, in a raid in her West Bank town of Nabi Salih on suspicion of “inciting violence and terrorist activities”.

Overall, the army said more than 1,350 Palestinians had been arrested across the West Bank since October 7.

Tamimi became prominent at age 14 when she was filmed biting an Israeli soldier to prevent him from arresting her younger brother and for later slapping another Israeli soldier.

UN chief says Gaza ceasefire 'more urgent with every passing hour'

By - Nov 07,2023 - Last updated at Nov 07,2023

UNITED NATIONS, United States — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, as he warned that the bombarded Gaza Strip was becoming a "graveyard for children".

"The unfolding catastrophe makes the need for a humanitarian ceasefire more urgent with every passing hour," he told reporters at the UN headquarters.

"The parties to the conflict, and, indeed, the international community,  face an immediate and fundamental responsibility: to stop this inhuman collective suffering and dramatically expand humanitarian aid to Gaza," he said.

"The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity."

According to the health ministry in Gaza, 10,222 people have died including more than 4,000 children in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its strikes in retaliation.

Guterres also deplored the killings of media workers. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 36 journalists and media workers have been killed.

“More journalists have reportedly been killed over a four-week period than in any conflict in at least three decades,” Guterres said.

Guterres was formally launching a recently announced $1.2 billion UN humanitarian appeal to help 2.7 million Palestinians over the entire Gaza Strip and parts of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Aid trucks have been coming into Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, but the level remains well below the level before October 7, with Israel saying it needs time for security checks of vehicles, and they are not bringing fuel.

“Without fuel, newborn babies in incubators and patients on life support will die,” Guterres said.

“The way forward is clear. A humanitarian ceasefire, now. All parties respecting all their obligations under international humanitarian law,” he said.

Guterres again voiced alarm about the “clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing”.

“Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law,” he said without naming Israel. 

Health ministry says Israeli bombing on Gaza camp kills 45

By - Nov 05,2023 - Last updated at Nov 05,2023

Smoke plumes billow during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on October 12 (AFP photo)

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — At least 45 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on a central Gaza refugee camp, health ministry said on Sunday in an updated toll, as fighting rages in the Palestinian territory.

The Hamas-run ministry in the besieged Gaza Strip said in a statement that "the number of martyrs in the Maghazi massacre has risen to 45".

Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra had initially reported 30 deaths.

Hamas said in a statement posted on Telegram that Israel had "directly" bombed civilian homes, adding that most of the dead were women and children.

“An Israeli air strike targeted my neighbours’ house in Al Maghazi camp, my house next door partially collapsed,” said Mohammed Alaloul, 37, a journalist working for the Turkish Anadolu Agency.

Alaloul told AFP his 13-year-old son, Ahmed, and his 4-year-old son, Qais, were killed in the attack, along with his brother. His wife, mother and two other children were injured.

The health ministry in Gaza, the narrow territory under Hamas control since 2007, said more than 9,480 Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli strikes and the intensifying ground campaign.

 

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