Region

BEIRUT — In mosques, football stadiums and towns across the Arab world, pro-Palestinian sentiment has surged after a shock Hamas attack on Israel, sparking a groundswell of solidarity for the Palestinians.

From Ramallah to Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo, people have distributed sweets, danced and chanted prayers in support of the “resistance” to Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian land.

“My entire life, I have seen Israel kill us, confiscate our lands and arrest our children,” said Farah Al Saadi, a 52-year-old coffee vendor from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“I was pleased by what Hamas did,” said the man, whose son is in Israeli detention, adding however that he feared the scale of “Israeli crimes in Gaza” in retaliation.

The multipronged surprise assault on Israel launched Saturday by the Palestinian militant group Hamas has killed hundreds in on both sides.

Israelis have found renewed dedication to their national cause, while Palestinians and their Arab supporters have also rallied in a rare mass show of popular unity in the region.

“I do not think there is a single Palestinian who does not support what happened,” said Issam Abu Bakr, a Palestinian official in the West Bank.

The Hamas attack was a “natural reaction to the crimes committed by Israel”, which has “turned its back on the political negotiation process”, he added.

‘Die silently’ 

The Hamas assault has killed at least 900 Israelis and wounded hundreds more, while the militants have taken around 150 hostages, the Israeli government has said.

Israeli retaliatory strikes on the Gaza Strip targets have killed 765 people and also wounded hundreds, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the blockaded enclave.

Hours after the shock operation began on Saturday, Palestinian supporters distributed sweets in south Lebanon and the capital Beirut.

Israel and Lebanon are still technically at war and Israeli troops occupied the country’s south for 22 years.

Residents of the southern port city of Sidon set off fire crackers and gathered in public squares as mosques blasted chants praising “Palestinian resistance fighters who are writing the most wonderful, heroic epic”. 

A rally was held at the American University of Beirut, where 18-year-old Palestinian student Reem Sobh said: “We are unable to carry weapons but at least, we are able to support them.”

On Instagram, Lebanese comedian Shaden Fakih explained the wave of support widely condemned in the West. 

“What do you expect from Palestinians? To get killed every day and not do anything about it... to die silently?” she said in a video.

“They will carry arms and fight back. This is their right,” she added, noting that she “can be against Hamas and still support any armed resistance against the oppressor, against [Israeli] apartheid”.

In the Tunisian capital, schools raised Palestinian flags and a coalition of organisations and political parties have called for massive solidarity rallies. 

The presidency declared its “full and unconditional support of the Palestinian people” and of their right to resist occupation.

‘Nothing to lose’ 

In Damascus, the Palestinian flag lit up the city’s opera house. 

Syrian university employee Marah Suleiman, 42, said the Hamas attack “stirred up a feeling within us that had not been moved for many years, and revived the spirit of resistance”.

Palestinians “have nothing to lose after all the killing, destruction and displacement they have been subjected to,” she said. 

In Egypt, which bans unauthorised protests, football fans turned matches into displays of solidarity, with pro-Palestinian chants.

In the war-scarred Iraqi capital Baghdad, Iran-backed paramilitaries trampled and torched Israeli flags during rallies in Tahrir Square. 

Even Arab Gulf states joined the wave of solidarity despite the US-brokered Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalise relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020.

The two countries released statements relatively sympathetic to Israel, but the popular mood told a different story.

Expressions of solidarity with Palestinians filled social media in the UAE, and prominent Emirati analyst Abdulkhaleq Abdulla condemned Israel’s attacks on Gaza as a “campaign of genocide” on X, formerly Twitter. 

In Bahrain, protesters have covered their faces, some with Palestinian keffiyehs, during near daily, unauthorised rallies.

“We will always support our brothers in Palestine,” said a 29-year-old demonstrator, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the authorities.

“If we were able to reach them, we would have fought alongside them,” he added.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip on Monday and cut off the water supply as it kept bombing targets in the crowded Palestinian enclave in response to the Hamas surprise assault it has likened to the 9/11 attacks.

Reeling from the Islamist group's unprecedented ground, air and sea attacks, Israel has counted over 700 dead and launched a withering barrage of strikes on Gaza that have killed 560 people there.

The skies over Gaza were blackened by plumes of smoke from deafening explosions as Hamas kept launching rockets as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where missile defence systems fired and air raid sirens blared.

Hamas, whose militants surged into Israeli towns on Saturday, spraying gunfire at civilians and dragging off about 100 hostages, claimed on Monday that Israeli air strikes had killed four of the captives.

Israel said it had called up 300,000 army reservists for its "Swords of Iron" campaign, and truck convoys were moving tanks to the south, where its forces had dislodged the last holdout Hamas fighters from embattled towns.

Palestinians in the impoverished coastal territory braced for what many feared will be a massive Israeli ground attack aiming to defeat Hamas and liberate the hostages.

Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Gaza civilians to get away from all Hamas sites, which he vowed to turn "to rubble".

Middle East tensions have spiked as Israel’s arch enemy Iran and their Lebanese ally Hizbollah have praised the Hamas attack, although Tehran rejected any role in the military operation.

Hamas has called on “resistance fighters” in the occupied West Bank and in Arab and Islamic nations to join its “Operation Al Aqsa Flood”, launched half-a-century after the October 1973 Arab-Israel war.

“The military operation is still continuing,” Hossam Badran, a Hamas official, told AFP from Doha, adding that “there is currently no chance for negotiation on the issue of prisoners or anything else”.

The United States has pledged “rock solid” support for Israel and said it would send munitions and military hardware to its key ally and divert an aircraft carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean.

Israel, which has long prided itself on a high-tech military and intelligence edge in its many conflicts, has been shaken to the core by Hamas’s unprecedented attack.

It now faces the threat of a multifront war after Hizbollah launched guided missiles and artillery shells from the north on Sunday “in solidarity” with Hamas, in what some observers considered a warning shot.

On Monday, the Israeli army said its soldiers had “killed a number of armed suspects” who had crossed the border from Lebanon and that Israeli helicopters were striking targets in the area.

A local Lebanese official told AFP Israel was shelling the southern border area while Hizbollah denied involvement in clashes or “any infiltration attempt” into Israel.

‘They butchered people’ 

Israel has expressed alarm and revulsion at the Hamas attack across the Gaza border fence, long deemed impregnable and guarded by surveillance cameras, drones, patrols and watchtowers, and the bloody violence they unleashed.

Among the hostages they took back into Gaza were children and a Holocaust survivor in a wheelchair, Israeli officials have said.

Up to 250 bodies were strewn across the site of a music festival in a Negev desert kibbutz, mostly young people, and charred car wrecks were piled up in a sign of the panicked rush to escape, while other revellers were feared to be among the hostages.

“They butchered people in cold blood in an inconceivable way,” said Moti Bukjin of the Zaka religious volunteer group which helped collect the human remains.

Israelis have voiced anger at the intelligence failure that blindsided the nation on a Jewish holiday.

But for now its people appeared to have put aside deep political divisions that have long roiled the country and braced for what the right-wing veteran premier Netanyahu has warned will be a “long and difficult war”.

 ‘In constant fear’ 

“Never before have so many Israelis been killed by one single thing, let alone enemy activity in one day,” said army spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.

The multipronged attack had brought “by far the worst day in Israeli history”, he said, likening it to a combination of the “9/11 and Pearl Harbour” attacks.

The situation was also dire inside Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel since Hamas assumed control there 15 years ago, a period that has seen multiple wars with Israel.

Air strikes have levelled residential tower blocks, mosques and the central bank. More than 120,000 people in Gaza have been displaced, said the United Nations.

“The situation is unbearable,” said Amal Al Sarsawi, 37, as she took shelter in a school classroom with her terrified children.

The sense of safety of children in the war zone has been “ripped away” said Jason Lee of charity group Save the Children.

“Our teams and their families are terrified, they feel like sitting targets. Children across the region are in constant fear.”

Global shock waves 

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have rallied in support and clashed with Israeli security forces, leaving 15 Palestinians dead since Saturday.

Anti-Israel activists have demonstrated in Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere while security was stepped up around Jewish temples and school worldwide.

The spiralling conflict has sent shock waves around the world amid fears of a wider escalation, sparking a surge in oil prices on fears of tightening supplies.

Western capitals have condemned the attack by Hamas, which the United States and European Union consider a terrorist group.

The EU has halted development aid payments to the Palestinians and said it was placing 691 million euros ($728 million) of support “under review”.

Foreign or dual nationals have been reported killed, abducted or missing by countries including Brazil, Britain, Cambodia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Panama, Paraguay, Thailand, Ukraine and the United States.

In the Egyptian city of Alexandria a police officer opened fire “at random” on Israeli tourists Sunday, killing two of them and their Egyptian guide before he was arrested.

Israel, which has struck US-brokered normalisation deals with several Arab nations in recent years, has issued a travel warning for its citizens, especially in the Middle East.

The Arab League said its foreign ministers will hold an “extraordinary meeting” on Wednesday to discuss “Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers "killed a number of armed suspects" who crossed the border from Lebanon, the country's military said on Monday as further south it fought a devastating war with Gaza militants.

A local Lebanese official, Abdullah Al Gharib, told AFP Israel was shelling the southern border area.

"Fields on the outskirts of the village [of Dhayra] were subjected to intense Israeli artillery shelling, preceded by intermittent gunfire," said Gharib, the village mayor.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said "Israeli occupation forces bombed the Dhayra border area... with artillery".

Heavy gunfire was heard in the village, with explosions also heard "in various southern regions", it added.

Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah movement denied any involvement.

"There is no truth to information circulating about clashes between resistance elements and the Israeli enemy or any infiltration," a spokesperson for the group said in a statement.

The incident comes a day after Hizbollah said it fired artillery shells and guided missiles at Israel, "in solidarity" with attacks launched from Gaza by its ally Hamas.

Israel's army said it hit back on Sunday with artillery into southern Lebanon.

In 2006 Hizbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war that left more than 1,200 dead in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly soldiers. The two countries remain technically at war.

Israel has warned Hizbollah against involvement in the war with Gaza.

QAMISHLI, Syria — Turkish attacks in Kurdish-held northeast Syria killed 29 Kurdish security personnel and wounded 28 at an academy for the forces, authorities in the semi-autonomous area said Monday.

Turkey has been bombing sites in the area since Thursday, hitting civilian and military targets and infrastructure and causing casualties, according to Kurdish authorities.

An academy for the Kurds' anti-drug forces was among several targets overnight, the Kurdish authorities said in a statement, adding that "29 members of the anti-drug forces were killed and 28 others were wounded", some of them critically.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, reported that 30 members of the Kurdish internal security forces, known as the Asayish, were killed and 37 others wounded after a Turkish war plane targeted a training centre on the outskirts of Al-Malikiyah at midnight.

AFP correspondents said that authorities in the area have called for blood donations, while witnesses said that hospitals were full of casualties.

Amid the chaos of Syria’s long-running civil conflict, Syria’s Kurds have carved out a semi-autonomous area in the country’s northeast.

Turkey’s defence ministry said on Friday it launched a new wave of air strikes in retaliation for an attack in Ankara earlier this month that wounded two security personnel.

A branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies, claimed responsibility for the first bombing to hit the Turkish capital since 2016.

Turkey launched strikes on PKK positions in northern Iraq hours after the October 1 attack, with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan saying days later that the assailants “came from Syria and were trained there”.

Kurdish denial 

The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces spearheaded the battle to dislodge the Daesd terror group fighters from their last scraps of territory in Syria in 2019.

Turkey views the Kurdish People’s Protection Units that dominate the SDF as an offshoot of the PKK.

The SDF, the Kurds’ de facto army in the northeast, denied that those behind the Ankara attack had passed through the area.

Turkish bombings had largely subsided over the weekend after strikes hit energy infrastructure, including power stations and oil facilities on Thursday and Friday, killing at least 15 security personnel and civilians, according to the Kurdish authorities.

Since 2016, Turkey has carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened a new incursion.

Turkey supported early rebel efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, and maintains a military presence in northern stretches of the war-torn country which angers Damascus.

In November last year, Turkey launched air strikes on Kurdish-held areas of Syria and Iraq in response to a bombing in Istanbul that killed six people.

The conflict in Syria has killed more than half-a-million people since it began in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, spiralling into a devastating war involving foreign armies, militias and extremists.

WAD MADANI,  Sudan — At least three civilians were killed on Monday in Sudan when shells struck a key hospital in the capital, a medical source said, as fighting between rival generals continued unabated.

“Shells fell on the Al Nau hospital,” in Omdurman, the twin city of Sudan’s capital Khartoum, a medical source told AFP by telephone.

Omdurman has been the site of fierce battles between the regular army led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo who have been at war since April.

Rights groups have accused both sides of targeting health facilities since the conflict began on April 15.

In August, medical aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that Al Nau hospital “is one of the last health facilities open in Omdurman”.

“It’s also the only facility with a trauma emergency room or surgical capacity in north Omdurman, so all wounded patients in the city are brought there,” MSF said, while other medics have called the hospital “a beacon of hope”.

According to the United Nations, more than 70 per cent of the country’s hospitals are out of service.

Though most of the fighting was previously contained to the capital and the western region of Darfur, it has also spread to areas south of Khartoum according to witnesses.

In Jabal Awliya town, 50 kilometres south of the capital, medics “have had to halt all work at the hospital since last night due to heavy artillery shelling”, a doctor told AFP.

“Dozens of wounded” remained in the hospital, waiting for urgent treatment, he added.

More than 9,000 people have been killed in the Sudan conflict so far, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.

But aid groups and medics have repeatedly warned the real toll exceeds recorded figures, with many of those wounded and killed never reaching hospitals or morgues.

Monday’s shelling comes a day after fighting resumed in El Obeid, the state capital of North Kordofan 350 kilometres south of Khartoum.

One child was killed and at least 16 injured in the fighting while some homes were destroyed, a committee of pro-democracy lawyers that have worked to document atrocities said.

The war has caused an estimated 5.5 million people to flee, both within Sudan and across borders, according to the United Nations.