Category: FOKUS

KABUL — Checking imported books, removing texts from libraries and distributing lists of banned titles — Taliban authorities are working to remove “un-Islamic” and anti-government literature from circulation.

The efforts are led by a commission established under the Ministry of Information and Culture soon after the Taliban swept to power in 2021 and implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia.

In October, the ministry announced the commission had identified 400 books “that conflicted with Islamic and Afghan values, most of which have been collected from the markets.”

The department in charge of publishing has distributed copies of the Qur’an and other Islamic texts to replace seized books, the ministry statement said.

The ministry has not provided figures for the number of removed books, but two sources, a publisher in Kabul and a government employee, said texts had been collected in the first year of Taliban rule and again in recent months.

“There is a lot of censorship. It is very difficult to work, and fear has spread everywhere,” the Kabul publisher told AFP.

Books were also restricted under the previous foreign-backed government ousted by the Taliban, when there was “a lot of corruption, pressures and other issues,” he said.

But “there was no fear, one could say whatever he or she wanted to say,” he added.
“Whether or not we could make any change, we could raise our voices.”

AFP received a list of five of the banned titles from an information ministry official.

It includes “Jesus the Son of Man” by renowned Lebanese-American author Khalil Gibran, for containing “blasphemous expressions,” and the “counterculture” novel “Twilight of the Eastern Gods” by Albanian author Ismail Kadare.

“Afghanistan and the Region: A West Asian Perspective” by Mirwais Balkhi, an education minister under the former government, was also banned for “negative propaganda.”

During the Taliban’s previous rule from 1996 to 2001, there were comparatively few publishing houses and booksellers in Kabul, the country having already been wracked by decades of war.

Today, thousands of books are imported each week alone from neighboring Iran — which shares the Persian language with Afghanistan — through the Islam Qala border crossing in western Herat province.

Taliban authorities rifled through boxes of a shipment at a customs warehouse in Herat city last week.

One man flipped through a thick English-language title, as another, wearing a camouflage uniform with a man’s image on the shoulder patch, searched for pictures of people and animals in the books.

“We have not banned books from any specific country or person, but we study the books and we block those that are contradictory to religion, sharia or the government, or if they have photos of living things,” said Mohammad Sediq Khademi, an official with the Herat department for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV).

“Any books that are against religion, faith, sect, sharia… we will not allow them,” the 38-year-old told AFP, adding the evaluations of imported books started some three months ago.

Images of living things — barred under some interpretations of Islam — are restricted according to a recent “vice and virtue” law that codifies rules imposed since the Taliban returned to power, but the regulations have been unevenly enforced.

Importers have been advised of which books to avoid, and when books are deemed unsuitable, they are given the option of returning them and getting their money back, Khademi said.

“But if they can’t, we don’t have any other option but to seize them,” he added.

“Once, we had 28 cartons of books that were rejected.”

Authorities have not gone from shop to shop checking for banned books, an official with the provincial information department and a Herat bookseller said, asking not to be named.

However, some books have been removed from Herat libraries and Kabul bookstores, a bookseller told AFP, also asking for anonymity, including “The History of Jihadi Groups in Afghanistan” by Afghan author Yaqub Mashauf.

Books bearing images of living things can still be found in Herat shops.

In Kabul and Takhar — a northern province where booksellers said they had received the list of 400 banned books — disallowed titles remained on some shelves.

Many non-Afghan works were banned, one seller said, “so they look at the author, whose name is there, and they are mostly banned” if they’re foreign.

His bookshop still carried translations of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Gambler” and fantasy novel “Daughter of the Moon Goddess” by Sue Lynn Tan.

But he was keen to sell them “very cheap” now, to clear them from his stock.

AN-AFP

DEIR AL-BALAH — Kekurangan tepung dan penutupan kedai roti utama di tengah Gaza memburukkan lagi keadaan kemanusiaan yang sudah teruk, ketika keluarga Palestin bergelut untuk mendapatkan makanan yang mencukupi.

Orang ramai menunggu dengan sedih dalam kesejukan di luar Kedai Roti Zadna yang tertutup di Deir Al-Balah pada Isnin.

Antaranya ialah Umm Shadi, seorang wanita pelarian dari Kota Gaza, yang memberitahu The Associated Press (AP), tiada roti yang tinggal kerana kekurangan tepung – satu beg yang berharga sehingga 400 shekel ($107) di pasaran, katanya, jika ada boleh didapati.

“Siapakah yang boleh membeli sebungkus tepung dengan harga 400 shekel?” dia bertanya.

Nora Muhanna, seorang lagi wanita kehilangan tempat tinggal dari Kota Gaza, berkata dia pergi dengan tangan kosong selepas menunggu lima atau enam jam untuk satu beg roti untuk anak-anaknya.

“Dari awal, tidak ada barang, dan jika ada, tidak ada wang,” katanya.

Hampir semua kira-kira 2.3 juta penduduk Gaza kini bergantung kepada bantuan antarabangsa untuk kelangsungan hidup, dan doktor serta kumpulan bantuan mengatakan kekurangan zat makanan berleluasa.

Pakar keselamatan makanan berkata kebuluran mungkin sudah berlaku di utara Gaza yang dilanda teruk.

Kumpulan bantuan menuduh tentera Israel menghalang malah menyekat penghantaran di Gaza.

Sementara itu, berpuluh-puluh orang beratur di Deir Al-Balah untuk mendapatkan bahagian sup lentil dan sedikit roti di dapur amal sementara.

Refat Abed, seorang pelarian dari Kota Gaza, tidak lagi tahu bagaimana dia mampu membeli makanan.

“Di mana saya boleh mendapatkan wang?” dia bertanya.

“Adakah saya merayu? Jika bukan kerana Allah dan sedekah, saya dan anak-anak saya akan kelaparan.”

AN-AP

KFEIR — On a mountain slope in south Lebanon, agricultural worker Assaad Al-Taqi is busy picking olives, undeterred by the roar of Israeli warplanes overhead.

This year, he is collecting the harvest against the backdrop of the raging Israel-Hezbollah war.

He works in the village of Kfeir, just a few kilometers (miles) from where Israeli bombardment has devastated much of south Lebanon since Israel escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in September.

“But I’m not afraid of the shelling,” Taqi said, as he and other workers hit the tree branches with sticks, sending showers of olives tumbling down into jute bags.

“Our presence here is an act of defiance,” the 51-year-old said, but also noting that the olive “is the tree of peace.”

Kfeir is nine kilometers (six miles) from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, in the mixed Christian and Druze district of Hasbaya, which has largely been spared the violence that has wracked nearby Hezbollah strongholds.

But even Hasbaya’s relative tranquillity was shattered last month when three journalists were killed in an Israeli strike on a complex where they were sleeping.

Israel and Hezbollah had previously exchanged cross-border fire for almost a year over the Gaza conflict.

The workers in Kfeir rest in the shade of the olive trees, some 900 meters (3,000 feet) above sea level on the slopes of Mount Hermon, which overlooks an area where Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli-held territory meet.

They have been toiling in relative peace since dawn, interrupted only by sonic booms from Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier and the sight of smoke rising on the horizon from strikes on a south Lebanon border village.

Hassna Hammad, 48, who was among those picking olives, said the agricultural work was her livelihood.

“We aren’t afraid, we’re used to it,” she said of the war.

But “we are afraid for our brothers impacted by the conflict,” she added, referring to the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced by the fighting.

Elsewhere in south Lebanon, olive trees are bulging with fruit that nobody will pick, after villagers fled Israeli bombardment and the subsequent ground operation that began on September 30.

A World Bank report this month said that “the disruption of the olive harvest caused by bombing and displacement is expected to lead to $58 million in losses” in Lebanon.

It said 12 percent of olive groves in the conflict-affected areas it assessed had been destroyed.

Normally, the olive-picking season is highly anticipated in Lebanon, and some people return each year to their native villages and fields just for the harvest.

“Not everyone has the courage to come” this time, said Salim Kassab, who owns a traditional press where villagers bring their olives to extract the oil.

“Many people are absent… They sent workers to replace them,” said Kassab, 50.
“There is fear of the war of course,” he said, adding that he had come alone this year, without his wife and children.

Kassab said that before the conflict, he used to travel to the southern cities of Nabatiyeh and Sidon if he needed to fix his machines, but such trips are near impossible now because of the danger.

The World Bank report estimated that 12 months of agriculture sector losses have cost Lebanon $1.1 billion, in a country already going through a gruelling five-year economic crisis before the fighting erupted.

Areas near the southern border have sustained “the most significant damage and losses,” the report said.

It cited “the burning and abandonment of large areas of agricultural land” in both south and east Lebanon, “along with lost harvests due to the displacement of farmers.”

Elsewhere in Kfeir, Inaam Abu Rizk, 77, and her husband were busy washing olives they plan to either press for oil or jar to be served throughout the winter.

Abu Rizk has taken part in the olive harvest for decades, part of a tradition handed down the generations, and said that despite the war, this year was no different.

“Of course we’re afraid… there is the sound of planes and bombing,” she said.

But “we love the olive month — we are farmers and the land is our work.”

AN-AFP

JUBA — Hampir 60 peratus penduduk Sudan Selatan akan mengalami masalah ketakamanan makanan akut tahun depan, dengan lebih dua juta kanak-kanak berisiko kekurangan zat makanan, data daripada kajian disokong Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu (PBB) memberi amaran pada Isnin.

Negara termuda di dunia itu adalah antara yang termiskin di dunia dan sedang bergelut dengan banjir terburuk dalam beberapa dekad serta kemasukan besar pelarian yang melarikan diri dari perang di Sudan ke utara.

Semakan Klasifikasi Fasa Keselamatan Makanan Bersepadu (IPC) terbaru menganggarkan 57 peratus penduduk akan mengalami masalah ketakselamatan makanan akut mulai April.

PBB mentakrifkan ketidakamanan makanan akut sebagai apabila “ketidakupayaan seseorang untuk mengambil makanan yang mencukupi meletakkan nyawa atau mata pencarian mereka dalam bahaya serta-merta.”

Hampir 7.7 juta orang akan dikelaskan sebagai akut tidak selamat makanan, menurut IPC, peningkatan daripada 7.1 juta orang pada musim kurus sebelumnya.

“Tahun demi tahun kita melihat kelaparan mencapai beberapa tahap tertinggi yang pernah kita lihat di Sudan Selatan,” kata Mary-Ellen McGroarty dari Program Makanan Sedunia (WFP) PBB di Sudan Selatan.

“Apabila kita melihat kawasan yang mempunyai tahap ketidakamanan makanan yang paling tinggi, jelas bahawa keputusasaan – konflik dan krisis iklim – adalah pemacu utama,” katanya.

Lebih daripada 85 peratus orang yang pulang melarikan diri dari perang di Sudan akan menjadi sangat tidak selamat makanan dari musim kurus berikutnya pada April.

Data itu juga mendapati bahawa 2.1 juta kanak-kanak berisiko kekurangan zat makanan, ditambah lagi dengan kekurangan air minuman dan sanitasi yang selamat.

“Masalah pemakanan adalah hasil akhir daripada beberapa siri krisis,” kata Hamida Lasseko, wakil UNICEF di Sudan Selatan, sambil menambah agensi itu “amat bimbang” bahawa jumlah itu akan meningkat jika bantuan tidak ditingkatkan.

Pada Oktober, Bank Dunia memberi amaran banjir yang meluas “memburukkan keadaan kemanusiaan yang sudah kritikal.”

Agensi kemanusiaan PBB, OCHA, berkata awal bulan ini bahawa 1.4 juta orang telah terjejas oleh banjir, yang telah menyebabkan hampir 380,000 orang kehilangan tempat tinggal.

Sejak mencapai kemerdekaan daripada Sudan pada 2011, negara termuda di dunia itu terus dibelenggu oleh ketidakstabilan kronik, keganasan dan genangan ekonomi serta bencana iklim seperti kemarau dan banjir.

Negara itu juga menghadapi satu lagi tempoh lumpuh politik selepas presidensi menangguhkan pilihan raya selama dua tahun hingga Disember 2026, menjengkelkan rakan antarabangsa.

Sudan Selatan mempunyai sumber minyak yang banyak tetapi sumber pendapatan penting telah musnah pada Februari apabila saluran paip eksport rosak di negara jiran, Sudan yang dilanda perang.

AN-AFP

ADRE, Chad — Crossing into Chad, the 27-year-old thought she’d left the horrors of Sudan’s war behind: the bodies she ran over while fleeing, the screams of girls being raped, the disappearance of her husband when gunmen attacked. But now she says she has faced more suffering — being forced as a refugee to have sex to get by.

She cradled her 7-week-old son, who she asserted was the child of an aid worker who promised her money in exchange for sex.

“The children were crying. We ran out of food,” she said of her four other children.
“He abused my situation.”
She and other women who spoke to The Associated Press requested anonymity because they feared retribution.

Some Sudanese women and girls assert that men, including those meant to protect them such as humanitarian workers and local security forces, have sexually exploited them in Chad’s displacement sites, offering money, easier access to assistance and jobs. Such sexual exploitation in Chad is a crime.

Hundreds of thousands of people, most of them women, have streamed into Chad to escape Sudan’s civil war, which has killed over 20,000 people. Aid groups struggle to support them in growing displacement sites.

Three women spoke with the AP in the town of Adre near the Sudanese border.

A Sudanese psychologist shared the accounts of seven other women and girls who either refused to speak directly with a reporter or were no longer in touch with her. The AP could not confirm their accounts.

Daral-Salam Omar, the psychologist, said all the seven told her they went along with the offers of benefits in exchange for sex out of necessity.

Some sought her help because they became pregnant and couldn’t seek an abortion at a clinic for fear of being shunned by their community, she said.

“They were psychologically destroyed. Imagine a woman getting pregnant without a husband amid this situation,” Omar said.

Sexual exploitation during large humanitarian crises is not uncommon, especially in displacement sites.

Aid groups have long struggled to combat the issue. They cite a lack of reporting by women, not enough funds to respond and a focus on first providing basic necessities.

The UN refugee agency said it doesn’t publish data on cases, citing the confidentiality and safety of victims.

People seeking protection should never have to make choices driven by survival, experts said.

Nidhi Kapur, who works on preventing sexual exploitation and abuse in emergency contexts, said exploitation represents a deep failure by the aid community.

Yewande Odia, the United Nations Population’s Fund representative in Chad, said sexual exploitation is a serious violation.

UN agencies said displacement camps have “safe spaces” where women can gather, along with awareness sessions, a free hotline and feedback boxes to report abuse anonymously.

Yet many of the Sudanese women said they weren’t aware of the hotline, and some said using the boxes would draw unwanted attention.

The Sudanese woman with the newborn said she was afraid to report the aid worker for fear he’d turn her in to police.

She said she approached the aid worker, a Sudanese man, after searching for jobs to buy basic necessities like soap. She asked him for money. He said he’d give her cash but only in exchange for sex.

They slept together for months, she said, and he paid the equivalent of about $12 each time. After she had the baby, he gave her a one-time payment of approximately $65 but denied it was his, she said.

The man was a Sudanese laborer for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, she said.

Two other Sudanese women said Chadian men working at MSF sites— one wearing MSF clothing — solicited them after they applied for work with the organization.

The men took their phone numbers and repeatedly called, saying they’d give them jobs for sex. Both women said they refused.

Christopher Lockyear, MSF’s secretary general, said the organization was not aware of the allegations and wanted to investigate.
“Asking for money or sex in exchange for access to care or a job is a clear violation of our behavioral commitments,” he said.

MSF would not say how many such cases had been reported among Sudanese refugees in Chad. Last year, out of 714 complaints made about MSF staff behavior where it works globally, 264 were confirmed to be cases of abuse or inappropriate behavior including sexual exploitation, abuse of power and bullying, Lockyear said.

Lockyear said MSF is creating a pool of investigators at the global level to enhance its ability to pursue allegations.

One woman told the AP that a man with another aid group also exploited her, but she was unable to identify the organization.

Omar, the psychologist, said several of the women told her they were exploited by aid workers, local and international. She gave no evidence to back up the claims.

Another woman, one of the two who alleged they were approached after seeking work with MSF, said she also refused a local policeman who approached her and promised an extra food ration card if she went to his house.

Ali Mahamat Sebey, the head official for Adre, said police are not allowed inside the camps and asserted that allegations against them of exploitation were false. With the growing influx of people, however, it’s hard to protect everyone, he said.

The women said they just want to feel safe, adding that access to jobs would lessen their vulnerability.

After most of her family was killed or abducted in Sudan’s Darfur region last year, one 19-year-old sought refuge in Chad. She didn’t have enough money to support the nieces and nephews in her care. She got a job at a restaurant in the camp but when she asked her Sudanese boss for a raise, he agreed on the condition of sex.

The money he paid was more than six times her salary. But when she got pregnant with his child, the man fled, she asserted. She rubbed her growing belly.

“If we had enough, we wouldn’t have to go out and lose our dignity,” she said.

AN-AP

HONG KONG — In a series of war games in the seas and skies around Taiwan last month, China deployed some of its newest strike aircraft, warships and missile forces.
However, one of the most menacing weapons used in the drills: an updated version of a bomber that first flew in the early years of the Cold War.

Like America, which still relies on upgraded versions of the B-52, a bomber from the same era, China has successfully modernized its jet-powered H-6 to carry on flying deep into the 21st Century.

These bombers were shown on China’s state-controlled media taking off for missions designed to intimidate Taiwan as part of the war-game drills. Dubbed Joint-Sword 2024B by China’s military, the maneuvers were a “stern warning” to people on Taiwan seeking independence, the Chinese military said.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported that 153 Chinese military aircraft, 14 naval vessels and 12 other ships were detected around the island over a 25-hour period after the start of the exercise on Oct. 14.

The ministry also reported that 111 of the aircraft had crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the island’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).

Taiwan’s defense ministry told Reuters that “three groups of three H-6 aircraft” had been detected operating in the island’s air space during China’s military exercise.

Two of the groups “conducted simulated attack drills,” the ministry said.

China’s defense ministry didn’t respond to questions for this story.

Some modernized versions of China’s H-6 bomber are now capable of launching ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads while others can carry multiple long-range anti-ship and land attack missiles, according to defense analysts and Pentagon reports on the Chinese military.

Some versions can be refueled in flight, allowing them to fly from bases on the Chinese mainland and strike at targets deep into the Western Pacific, where the U.S. has large bases on Guam and elsewhere.

Asked about the military drills, Taiwan’s defense ministry said the island was using “joint intelligence surveillance to keep track of the communist military’s movements around Taiwan,” while also dispatching “air, sea and missile forces to respond as appropriate to ensure national defense and security.”

Major Pete Nguyen, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the U.S. was “prepared to respond to any threat and protect the homeland.” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “has often said that he does not believe conflict with the PRC is imminent nor inevitable,” Nguyen said in response to questions.

Beijing says that Taiwan is part of China and has not ruled out the use of force to bring the island under its control. The leaders of democratically governed Taiwan reject these sovereignty claims.

China’s military capabilities are in the spotlight as tensions with the U.S. remain high with Donald Trump returning to office.

In a display of its growing military prowess, China put its J-35A stealth fighter on display at the Zhuhai air show this week.

SERIOUS THREAT

Unlike America, which stopped building the B-52 in 1962, China has continued to make the twin-engine H-6 at a plant in central China.
However, H-6 production may have recently slowed or been halted, according to Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submarine officer and an expert on China’s military. He estimates the Chinese air force now has about 230 of these bombers.

The H-6 is derived from the Tupolev Tu-16 bomber, which the Soviet Union introduced into service in the early 1950s and was given the NATO code name Badger.

China began building these aircraft under license in the late 1950s, according to experts on the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military.

The Taiwanese and Japanese militaries have reported that H-6 bombers have been frequently deployed on flights near their airspace in recent years.

They are also sent on flights over the South China Sea where Beijing claims sovereignty over extensive areas of disputed territory.

In a conflict, these bombers would pose a serious threat to ships and targets on land, according to U.S. and Taiwanese military experts.

Shugart said that Chinese military doctrine for island landing campaigns, such as an invasion of Taiwan, calls for strikes against headquarters, communications facilities, logistics centers and other key targets, along with attacks on airfields, ports and ships at sea. “I would expect H-6s to be involved in all of these sorts of operations,” he said.

These attacks would likely be coordinated with missile strikes, possibly without warning, that would soften air defenses and crater runways to trap aircraft on the ground, Shugart added.
He said these aircraft could then be hit with cruise missiles launched from H-6 bombers.

China’s official media in mid-September provided some insight into the role the H-6 might play in a clash off the Chinese coast.

State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of one of these bombers flying in an exercise with fighters and a long-range WZ-7 surveillance drone. The drone penetrated the air defenses of a potential adversary, identified a target and relayed this information to the H-6, according to the footage. The bomber was shown launching an anti-ship missile.

Beijing says that Taiwan is part of China and has not ruled out the use of force to bring the island under its control. The leaders of democratically governed Taiwan reject these sovereignty claims.

China’s military capabilities are in the spotlight as tensions with the U.S. remain high with Donald Trump returning to office.

In a display of its growing military prowess, China put its J-35A stealth fighter on display at the Zhuhai air show this week.

SERIOUS THREAT

Unlike America, which stopped building the B-52 in 1962, China has continued to make the twin-engine H-6 at a plant in central China.
However, H-6 production may have recently slowed or been halted, according to Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submarine officer and an expert on China’s military. He estimates the Chinese air force now has about 230 of these bombers.

The H-6 is derived from the Tupolev Tu-16 bomber, which the Soviet Union introduced into service in the early 1950s and was given the NATO code name Badger.

China began building these aircraft under license in the late 1950s, according to experts on the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military.

The Taiwanese and Japanese militaries have reported that H-6 bombers have been frequently deployed on flights near their airspace in recent years.

They are also sent on flights over the South China Sea where Beijing claims sovereignty over extensive areas of disputed territory.

In a conflict, these bombers would pose a serious threat to ships and targets on land, according to U.S. and Taiwanese military experts.

Shugart said that Chinese military doctrine for island landing campaigns, such as an invasion of Taiwan, calls for strikes against headquarters, communications facilities, logistics centers and other key targets, along with attacks on airfields, ports and ships at sea. “I would expect H-6s to be involved in all of these sorts of operations,” he said.

These attacks would likely be coordinated with missile strikes, possibly without warning, that would soften air defenses and crater runways to trap aircraft on the ground, Shugart added.

He said these aircraft could then be hit with cruise missiles launched from H-6 bombers.

China’s official media in mid-September provided some insight into the role the H-6 might play in a clash off the Chinese coast.

State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of one of these bombers flying in an exercise with fighters and a long-range WZ-7 surveillance drone.

The drone penetrated the air defenses of a potential adversary, identified a target and relayed this information to the H-6, according to the footage.

The bomber was shown launching an anti-ship missile.

REUTERS

GAZA — Itimad al-Qanou, a Palestinian mother struggling to feed her seven children, feels abandoned by everyone.

She sometimes feels that death is the best way to end her family’s suffering after a year of war that has turned Gaza into a bombed-out wasteland gripped by hunger.

“Let them drop a nuclear bomb and end it. We don’t want this life we’re living; we are dying slowly. Have mercy on us. Look at these children,” said the mother of three boys and four girls aged between eight and 18.

Children in their town of Deir al-Balah crowd at a charity site with empty pots, desperate for nourishment.
Aid workers distribute lentil soup from a pot. But it is never enough to stave off hunger and ease widespread panic.

Qanou says her family faces the Israeli airstrikes that have killed tens of thousands of people and flattened much of Gaza on the one side, and hunger on the other.

“No one is looking at us, no one cares about us. I ask the Arab countries to stand with us, at least to open the borders so food and supplies can reach our children,” she said.

“They are all liars; they are lying to the people. The United States is standing with Israel against us, they are all united against us.”

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid were allowed through the Erez crossing into northern Gaza on Monday.

The United States will decide this week on whether Israel has made progress toward improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and how Washington will respond.

FAMINE IMMINENT

Global food security experts said there is a “strong likelihood” that famine is imminent in parts of northern Gaza as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants there.

In response to the famine warning, the head of the U.N. Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, on Sunday published a list of Israel’s humanitarian efforts over the past six months. It detailed plans for supporting Gaza residents as winter approaches.

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon last month told the United Nations Security Council more than one million tons of aid had been delivered during the past year and he accused Hamas of hijacking the assistance. Hamas denies such allegations.

Aside from the hunger, Gazans say they have no place to go that is safe after repeated evacuations left them living in tent encampments until they need to move again to escape more strikes.

Some say their plight is even worse than the 1948 “Nakba” or Catastrophe when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were dispossessed of their homes in the war at the birth of the state of Israel.

“Conditions were better than what we face now. Now, we have no security, and no place,” said displaced Gazan Mohamed Abou Qaraa.

REUTERS

LONDON — At least 64 attacks targeting schools were reported in the Gaza Strip last month, averaging nearly two incidents per day, according to data from UNICEF and its partners released on Saturday.

The strikes in October led to an estimated 128 deaths, many of whom were children, the report added.

These schools, which often double as shelters for displaced families and children fleeing violence, have seen 226 attacks since the conflict began on Oct. 7 last year. Over one million children have been displaced in the past 14 months, facing unimaginable hardship and trauma, UNICEF said.

Schools should never be on the frontlines of war, and children should never be indiscriminately attacked while seeking shelter,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

“The horrors we are seeing in Gaza are setting a dark precedent for humanity, one where children are hit with bombs at record numbers while looking for safety inside classrooms. Trauma and loss have become their daily norm.”

Nearly half of the attacks in October – 25 in total – were concentrated in northern Gaza, an area experiencing relentless bombardment, widespread displacement, and limited humanitarian aid.

Many of these schools also serve as critical malnutrition treatment points, providing essential services to those in need.

International Humanitarian Law designates schools as protected spaces. However, since the renewed hostilities in October 2023, more than 95 percent of Gaza’s schools have been partially or completely destroyed. UNICEF reports that 87 percent will need extensive reconstruction before they can be used again.

The plight of children in Gaza underscores the urgent need for adherence to international laws protecting civilians and civilian infrastructure, particularly in conflict zones where the most vulnerable bear the brunt of violence and devastation, UNICEF added.

AN, Nov 9, 2024

JERUSALEM — With virtually no food allowed into the northernmost part of Gaza for the past month, tens of thousands of Palestinians under Israeli siege are rationing their last lentils and flour to survive.

As bombardment pounds around them, some say they risk their lives by venturing out in search of cans of food in the rubble of destroyed homes.

Thousands have staggered out of the area, hungry and thin, into Gaza City, where they find the situation a little better.

One hospital reports seeing thousands of children suffering from malnutrition.

A nutritionist said she treated a pregnant woman wasting away at just 40 kilograms (88 pounds).

“We are being starved to force us to leave our homes,” said Mohammed Arqouq, whose family of eight is determined to stay in the north, weathering Israel’s siege. “We will die here in our homes.”

Medical workers warn that hunger is spiraling to dire proportions under a monthlong siege on northern Gaza by the Israeli military, which has been waging a fierce campaign since the beginning of October.

The military has severed the area with checkpoints, ordering residents to leave.

Many Palestinians fear Israel aims to depopulate the north long term.

On Friday, experts from a panel that monitors food security said famine is imminent in the north or may already be happening.

The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches next week for a 30-day request the administration of President Joe Biden gave Israel: raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding.

The US says Israel must allow a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. Israel has fallen far short.

In October, 57 trucks a day entered Gaza on average, according to figures from Israel’s military agency overseeing aid entry, known as COGAT. In the first week of November, the average was 81 a day.

The UN puts the number even lower — 37 trucks daily since the beginning of October.

It says Israeli military operations and general lawlessness often prevent it from collecting supplies, leaving hundreds of truckloads stranded at the border.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel had made some progress by announcing the opening of a new crossing into central Gaza and approving new delivery routes.

But he said Israel must do more.

“It’s not just sufficient to open new roads if more humanitarian assistance isn’t going through those roads,” he said.

Israeli forces have been hammering the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabaliya refugee camp.

Witnesses report intense fighting between troops and militants.

A trickle of food has reached Gaza City.

However, as of Thursday, nothing entered the towns farther north for 30 days, even as an estimated 70,000 people remain there, said Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, speaking from Gaza City.

The government acknowledged in late October that it hadn’t allowed aid into Jabaliya because of military “operational constraints” in response to a petition by Israeli human rights groups.

On Saturday, COGAT said it allowed 11 trucks of food and supplies into Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya. But Alia Zaki, a spokeswoman for the WFP, said Israeli troops at a checkpoint forced the convoy to unload the food before it could reach shelters in Beit Hanoun.

It was not clear what then happened to the supplies.

Palestinians in the north described a desperate daily struggle to find food, water, and safety as strike-level buildings, sometimes killing whole families.

Arqouq said he goes out at night to search bombed-out buildings: “Sometimes you find a half-empty package of flour, canned food, and lentils.”

He said his family relies on help from others sheltering at a Jabaliya school, but their food is also running low.

“We are like dogs and cats searching for their food in the rubble,” said Um Saber, a widow.

She said she and her six children had to flee a school-turned-shelter in Beit Lahiya when Israel struck it.

Now they live in her father-in-law’s home, stretching meager supplies of lentils and pasta with 40 others, mostly women and children.

Ahmed Abu Awda, a 28-year-old father of three living with 25 relatives in a Jabaliya house, said they have a daily meal of lentils with bread, rationing to ensure children eat.

“Sometimes we don’t eat at all,” he said.

Lubna, a 38-year-old mother of five, left food behind when fleeing as strikes and drone fire pummeled the street in Jabaliya.
“We got out by a miracle,” she said from Beit Lahiya, where they’re staying.

Her husband scavenged flour from destroyed homes after Israeli forces withdrew around nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, she said. It’s moldy, she said, so they sift it first.
Her young daughter, Selina, is visibly gaunt and bony, Lubna said.

The offensive has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel seeks to empty northern Gaza and hold it long-term under a surrender-or-starve plan proposed by former generals.

Witnesses report Israeli troops going building to building, forcing people to leave toward Gaza City.

On Thursday, the Israeli military ordered new evacuations from several Gaza City neighborhoods, raising the possibility of a ground assault there.

The UN said some 14,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering there.

Food and supplies are also stretched for the several hundred thousand people in Gaza City.

Much of the city has been flattened by months of Israeli bombardment and shelling.

Dr. Rana Soboh, a nutrition specialist at Gaza City’s Patient Friend Benevolent Hospital, said she sees 350 cases of moderate to severe acute malnutrition daily, most from the north and also from Gaza City.

“The bone of their chest is showing, the eyes are protruding,” she said, and many have trouble concentrating.

“You repeat something several times so they can understand what we are saying.”

She cited a 32-year-old woman shedding weight in her third month of pregnancy — when they put her on the scale, she weighed only 40 kg.

“We are suffering, facing the ghost of famine hovering over Gaza,” Soboh said.

Even before the siege in the north, the Patient Friend hospital saw a flood of children suffering from malnutrition — more than 4,780 in September compared with 1,100 in July, said Dr. Ahmad Eskiek, who oversees hospital operations.

Soboh said staff get calls from Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya pleading for help: “What can we do? We have nothing.”

She had worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north but fled with her family to Gaza City. Now, they stay with 22 people in her uncle’s two-bedroom apartment.

On Thursday, she had had a morsel of bread for breakfast and later a meal of yellow lentils.

As winter rains near, new arrivals set up tents wherever they can.

Some 1,500 people are in a UN school already heavily damaged in strikes that “could collapse at any moment,” UNRWA spokesperson Wateridge said.

With toilets destroyed, people try to set aside a classroom corner to use, leaving waste “streaming down the walls of the school,” she said.

She said that others in Gaza City move into the rubble of buildings, draping tarps between layers of collapsed concrete.

“It’s like the carcass of a city,” she said.

AN-AP, Nov 9, 2024

GENEVA — The UN condemned on Friday the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify.

In a fresh report, the United Nations human rights office detailed the “horrific reality” that has unfolded for civilians in both Gaza and Israel since Hamas’s attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.

It detailed a vast array of violations of international law, warning that many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide.”

“The report shows how civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said.

It also pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”

“This conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease,” it continued.

“Palestinian armed groups have also conducted hostilities in ways that have likely contributed to harm to civilians.”

The report took on the contentious issue of the proportion of civilians figuring among the now nearly 43,500 people killed in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.

Due to a lack of access, UN agencies have since the beginning of the Gaza war relied on death tolls provided by the authorities in Hamas-run Gaza.

This has sparked accusations from Israel of “parroting… Hamas’s propaganda messages” but the UN has repeatedly said the figures are reliable.

Youngest victim aged one day

The rights office said it had now managed to verify 8,119 of the more than 34,500 people reportedly killed during the first six months of the war in Gaza, finding “close to 70 percent to be children and women.”

This, it said, indicated “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality.”

Of the verified fatalities, 3,588 of them were children and 2,036 were women, the report said.

“We do believe this is representative of the breakdown of total fatalities — similar proportion to what Gaza authorities have,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told AFP.

“Our monitoring indicates that this unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.

“Tragically, these documented patterns of violations continue unabated, over one year after the start of the war.”

His office found that about 80 percent of all the verified deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing, and that close to 90 percent had died in incidents that killed five or more people.

The main victims of Israeli strikes on residential buildings, it said, were children between the ages of five and nine, with the youngest victim a one-day-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman.

The report said that the large proportion of verified deaths in residential buildings could be partially explained by the rights office’s “verification methodology, which requires at least three independent sources.”

It also pointed to continuing “challenges in collecting and verifying information of killings in other circumstances.”

Gaza authorities have long said that women and children made up a significant majority of those killed in the war, but with lacking access for full UN verification, the issue has remained highly contentious.

Israel has insisted that its operations in Gaza are targeting militants.

But Friday’s report stressed that the verified deaths largely mirrored the demographic makeup of the population at large in Gaza, rather than the known demographic of combatants.

This, it said, clearly “raises concerns regarding compliance with the principle of distinction and reflect an apparent failure to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”

AN-AFP

UNITED NATIONS — Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine state is heading toward famine, the United Nations warned on Thursday, as the country’s civil war squeezes commerce and agricultural production.

“Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning,” a new report from the UN Development Programme said, projecting “famine conditions by mid-2025” if current levels of food insecurity are left unaddressed.

Some two million people are at risk of starvation, it said.

Amid the fighting roiling the country, international and domestic trade routes leading into the already impoverished state have been closed, leaving the entrance of aid and goods severely restricted.

In addition to intense fighting, people in Rakhine are facing “absence of incomes, hyperinflation (and) significantly reduced domestic food production,” the UNDP report warned.

Myanmar has been racked by conflict between the military and various armed groups opposed to its rule since the ruling junta ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021.

Clashes have rocked western Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked security forces in November 2023, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since the junta’s 2021 coup.

With the farming economy in crisis, the UNDP predicted local food production would only cover 20 percent of the state’s needs by March or April.

Internal rice production is “plummeting,” it said, due to “a lack of seeds, fertilizers (and) severe weather conditions.”

Some 97,000 tons of rice are set to be cultivated in Rakhine this year, compared to 282,000 tons last year, according to the UNDP.

A “steep rise” in internally displaced people, meanwhile, means many fields are unable to be worked.

According to UN figures, Rakhine state recorded more than 500,000 displaced people in August, compared to just under 200,000 in October 2023.

Facing particular risk are populations including members of the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority and displaced people.

AN-AFP

CAIRO — Israeli forces stepped up bombardment across the Gaza Strip on Thursday and ordered more evacuations, creating a fresh wave of displacement from northern Gaza, to which Palestinians fear they will not be able to return.

Palestinian health officials said at least 10 people had been killed and several others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a school housing displaced families in Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted a Hamas command center embedded inside the compound that previously served as a UN-run school. It accused Hamas of exploiting civilian facilities for military purposes, which the group denies.

As Israeli tanks advanced in Beit Lahiya, a month into a new push on northern Gaza, dozens of families streamed out. They arrived at schools and other shelters in Gaza City with whatever belongings and food they could bring.

Drones hovered overhead broadcasting evacuation orders, which were also carried on social media outlets and on audio and text messages sent to residents’ phones, one displaced man said.

“After they displaced most or all of the people in Jabalia, now they are bombing everywhere, killing people on the roads and inside their houses to force everyone out,” the man told Reuters via a chat app, giving only one name, Ahmed, for fear of repercussions.

Palestinian officials say Israel is carrying out a plan of “ethnic cleansing”.

Residents say no aid has entered Jabalia, Beit Lahiya or Beit Hanoun since the operation began on Oct 5.

The Israeli military says it was forced to clear Jabalia and start clearing nearby Beit Lahiya on Wednesday in order to take on Hamas militants who it says have regrouped there.

It denied press reports that people evacuated from northern Gaza would not be allowed to return and said it was continuing to allow aid into northern Gaza and the Jabalia area, where it said it was engaged in “intense combat”.

“The statement attributed to the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) in the past 24 hours, claiming that residents of northern Gaza will not be allowed to return to their homes, is incorrect and does not reflect the IDF’s objectives and values,” it said.

It said 300 trucks of aid from the United Arab Emirates had arrived at the port of Ashdod and would be sent into Gaza via the Erez crossing in the north and Kerem Shalom in the south.

The army posted new evacuation orders to residents in neighbourhoods near and inside Gaza City, citing rocket launches from there by Palestinian militants. The new orders covered the northern part of the Shati camp and three other neighbourhoods in Gaza City.

PALESTINIANS NERVOUS AT TRUMP VICTORY

Palestinian medics said Israeli fire had killed six people in Jabalia, the largest of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps, as well as four people in Beit Lahiya and seven in Rafah, near the border with Egypt in southern Gaza.

Later on Thursday, Palestinian media outlets said dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli air strike at a house belonging to the Mabhouh family in Jabalia. The health ministry didn’t confirm the death tally.

The Israeli military said it wasn’t aware of the incident, in response to a request for comment from Reuters.

The Israeli military said forces operating in Jabalia had killed about 50 militants in the past 24 hours and had helped Palestinians to exit combat zones through organised routes.

Palestinian and U.N. officials say there are no safe areas in the enclave, most of whose 2.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes.

Israel’s ground campaign to annihilate the Islamist movement, now more than a year old, has turned much of the Gaza Strip into a wasteland suffering a humanitarian catastrophe.

Many Palestinians are watching nervously to see if Republican former President Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election will strengthen U.S. support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump campaigned portraying himself as a more reliable ally for Israel than incumbent President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

More than 43,300 Palestinians have been killed in more than a year of war in Gaza, health authorities in the enclave say.

The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Violence has also surged across the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the start of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza.

In Tulkarm, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man during a raid, medics said, adding that an Israeli drone had wounded five other people, including a mother and her son, who had learning difficulties.

Hundreds of Palestinians – including armed fighters, stone-throwing youths and civilian bystanders – have been killed in clashes with Israeli security forces.

The Palestinian health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its casualty figures, put the number at 775, including 167 children.

Dozens of Israelis have been killed in Palestinian street attacks over the past year.

REUTERS

GAZA/JERUSALEM — Rakyat Palestin di Gaza mahu Donald Trump, yang memenangi pilihan raya AS, menamatkan perang antara Israel dan Hamas yang telah memusnahkan wilayah mereka.

“Kami dipindahkan, dibunuh … tiada apa yang tinggal untuk kami, kami mahukan keamanan,” kata Mamdouh Al-Jadba, yang dipindahkan ke Kota Gaza dari Jabalia.

“Saya harap Trump menemui penyelesaian, kami memerlukan seseorang yang kuat seperti Trump untuk menamatkan perang dan menyelamatkan kami, cukuplah, Tuhan, ini sudah memadai,” kata lelaki berusia 60 tahun itu. “Saya telah berpindah tiga kali, rumah saya musnah, anak-anak saya kehilangan tempat tinggal di selatan … Tiada apa-apa lagi, Gaza sudah habis.”

Umm Ahmed Harb, dari kawasan Al-Shaaf di timur Kota Gaza, juga mengharapkan Trump untuk “berdiri di sisi kami” dan menamatkan penderitaan wilayah itu.

“In-sya-Allah perang akan berakhir, bukan demi kita tetapi demi anak-anak kita yang tidak bersalah, mereka syahid dan mati kelaparan,” katanya.

“Kami tidak boleh membeli apa-apa dengan harga tinggi (makanan). Kami di sini dalam ketakutan, ketakutan dan kematian.”

Bagi rakyat Palestin di Tebing Barat yang diduduki, di mana keganasan juga meningkat sejak Oktober tahun lalu, kemenangan Trump adalah sebab untuk takut masa depan.

“Trump tegas dalam beberapa keputusan, tetapi keputusan ini boleh melayani kepentingan Israel dari segi politik lebih daripada mereka melayani untuk Palestin,” kata Samir Abu Jundi, 60 tahun di bandar Ramallah.

Seorang lagi lelaki yang memperkenalkan dirinya hanya dengan nama samarannya, Abu Mohammed, berkata dia juga tidak melihat sebab untuk mempercayai kemenangan Trump akan memihak kepada rakyat Palestin, berkata “tiada apa yang akan berubah kecuali lebih banyak penurunan.”

Imad Fakhida, seorang pengetua sekolah di bandar utama Ramallah, Tebing Barat, berkata “kembalinya Trump ke tampuk kuasa … akan membawa kita ke neraka dan akan ada peningkatan yang lebih besar dan lebih sukar.”

Dia menambah: “Dia terkenal dengan sokongan penuh dan terbesarnya untuk Israel.”

Semasa kempennya untuk kembali ke Rumah Putih, Trump berkata Gaza, yang terletak di timur Mediterranean, mungkin “lebih baik daripada Monaco.”

Dia juga berkata dia akan bertindak balas dengan cara yang sama seperti yang dilakukan Israel selepas serangan 7 Oktober, sambil menggesa sekutu AS itu untuk “menyelesaikan tugas” kerana ia “kehilangan banyak sokongan.”

Secara lebih luas, dia telah berjanji untuk menamatkan krisis antarabangsa yang meruncing, malah mengatakan dia boleh “menghentikan peperangan dengan panggilan telefon.”

Di Gaza, kenyataan sebegitu memberi alasan untuk harapan. “Kami menjangkakan keamanan akan datang dan perang akan berakhir dengan Trump kerana dalam kempen pilihan rayanya dia berkata bahawa dia mahukan keamanan dan menyeru untuk menghentikan peperangan di Gaza dan Timur Tengah,” kata Ibrahim Alian, 33, dari Kota Gaza.

Seperti kebanyakan penduduk wilayah itu, Alian telah beberapa kali dipindahkan oleh pertempuran. Dia berkata dia juga kehilangan bapanya kerana perang.

“In-sya-Allah perang di Semenanjung Gaza akan berakhir dan keadaan akan berubah,” katanya.

Sementara itu, pekerja perbandaran merobohkan tujuh rumah di kejiranan Silwan Baitulmaqdis Timur yang diduduki pada Selasa, penduduk Palestin dan majlis perbandaran berkata, selepas mahkamah Israel menyatakan pembinaan mereka tidak sah.

AN-AFP

CAIRO — Mohammad Atteya has been separated from his family in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya for two weeks since being evacuated to hospital with a head wound.

Now he is torn by regret for leaving them in the epicentre of a massive Israeli military assault.

“They speak to me about their nights of horror, they tell me how every night they pray for their safety and they bid one another farewell. Hell is boiling there, I feel it inside my chest. I wish I hadn’t left,” he said.

While he waits in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, only a few kilometres from home but unable to return, 23 members of his extended family are sheltering in one house with barely enough to eat.

“They are eating what is left of some canned food, no fresh vegetables or fruit, no meat or chicken and no clean water,” he said.

In the month since Israel launched a renewed campaign in the border town of Beit Lahiya, one of the first targets of last year’s ground assault, multiple strikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians.

A hit on a residential building on Oct. 29 killed at least 93 people, health officials said. Israel’s military said it was targeting a spotter on the roof.

Thousands of Palestinians have been evacuated from Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia as the Israeli military roots out bands of Hamas fighters still operating from amongst the rubble.

The area has been cut off from Gaza City to the south, communication has been patchy, supplies of food dwindling and prices of whatever is available reaching exorbitant levels.

It is unclear how many civilians remain in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service estimated 100,000 people remain in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, about half of those there at the start of the new Israeli campaign on Oct. 5.

The repeated bombardments have destroyed shelters and those remaining are huddled together in whatever structures still stand. “That is why every Israeli hit on a house leads to dozens of casualties,” said Atteya.

The Israeli military has disputed some of the casualty figures reported by Palestinian officials. Top United Nations officials say the situation in northern Gaza is “apocalyptic” with the entire population at imminent risk of death.

AMBUSHES AND GUNBATTLES

More than a year into the war in Gaza, the Israeli military believes that Hamas, whose fighters rampaged through communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, has been depleted but not yet extinguished.

“We expect this campaign to last an additional few weeks at least. There is a lot of work to do there in order to dismantle Hamas’ capabilities in this region,” an Israeli military official said last week.

The army says it has killed or captured hundreds of Hamas fighters during the northern Gaza operation, and at least 17 Israeli soldiers have been killed in gunbattles and ambushes in the wrecked streets or bombed-out buildings.

On Tuesday, Hamas’ armed wing said fighters in Jabalia had killed five Israeli soldiers at point blank range a day earlier, in one of several such announcements the group has made in past weeks. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.

Access for reporters is restricted and communications are erratic making independent verification of what is happening on the ground difficult.

Israel accuses Hamas fighters of hiding among civilians. In a night-time raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few health facilities struggling to operate in the north, an Israeli military official said around 100 Hamas fighters were captured, some posing as medical staff, along with weapons and ammunition.

Hamas rejected the accusations. Eid Sabbah, the hospital’s director of nursing, described a terrifying raid in a voice note to Reuters. “The terrorising of civilians, the injured and children began as they (the Israeli army) started opening fire on the hospital,” he said.

In advance of attacks, the Israeli military sends out evacuation orders to civilians in leaflet drops and targeted telephone calls.

“Evacuation is the worst feeling ever,” Atteya said. “You are told to run for your life, you try to ask the voice (Israeli caller), how much time do I have, he says ‘run’. What can you take with you when you go running?”

A public servant, Atteya had dreams for his children, aged between 15 and 2, in Hamas-run Gaza before the war, which health officials in Gaza say has killed more than 43,300 Palestinians.

“I don’t say the Hamas government was ideal. They couldn’t improve economic conditions,” he said. “We had a life, a good one, not good enough but we didn’t have the (Israeli) occupation’s killing machine tearing us up everyday.”

The future is hard for Atteya to envisage. Many Palestinians believe the Israeli campaign is aimed at preparing the way for a return of Israeli settlers to post-war Gaza.

“They are making buffer zones, that’s why they are demolishing and bombing residential districts, and some of their fanatics want to return settlers in Gaza. This is how bad the situation is,” he said.

The Israeli military denies such plans and says the evacuation orders are meant to keep civilians out of harm’s way.

REUTERS

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — After over a year of war in Gaza, Palestinian fishermen gather along the coastline, desperately casting their nets in hopes of catching enough for their families amid widespread hunger.

Since Israel began a military onslaught in Gaza after Hamas’ October 2023 attack, Israeli restrictions in the waters off the enclave have made life almost impossible for fishermen, who no longer sail out to sea and instead must stay by the shore.

In Khan Younis, Ibrahim Ghurab, 71, and Waseem Al Masry, 24, fish for sardines from the shoreline in front of a encampment of tents and makeshift shelters for those displaced by the war.

“Life is difficult,” Ghurab said. “One tries to secure food. There is no aid, we don’t receive anything anymore. In the beginning there was some (humanitarian) aid, very little, but now there is no more.”

Fishermen like Ghurab and Al Masry struggle daily to bring in even a modest catch to feed their families. There is rarely any fish left over from a daily haul to be sold to others.

Fishing was an important part of daily life in Gaza before the war, helping people eke out a living by selling their daily hauls in the market and feed the population.

But scant aid is reaching Gaza amid Israeli restrictions and frequent fighting, and many people have no income. The price of simple goods are largely out of reach for most.

“We have to come here and risk our lives,” Al Masry said, describing shootings by the Israeli military from the sea that he accused of targeting fisherman on the beach in Khan Younis.

Ghurab similarly said that Israeli military boats had fired upon fisherman at Khan Younis.

The Israeli military did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the claims the military had shot at fishermen.

Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas for the Islamist militant group’s deadly, cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023 has devastated densely populated Gaza and displaced most of the 2.3 million population.

REUTERS

AL-QUSAYR — The flow of displaced families crossing from Lebanon into Syria via a secondary crossing has slowed to a trickle after an Israeli strike there last week, a local official told AFP on Monday.

The land crossing on Lebanon’s northeastern border, known as Jousieh on the Syrian side, connects to Qusayr in Syria’s Homs province.

It was put out of service last Friday when the Israeli strike created a large crater that blocked vehicle traffic.

The raid came after the main land border with Syria, known as Masnaa on the Lebanese side and which lies between Beirut and Damascus, was forced to close by an Israel strike on October 4.

The attacks have heavily constrained the ability of people to flee Lebanon overland at a time when all airlines except the national carrier have suspended flights.

“The movement of displaced people has dropped by 90 percent since the (Jousieh) crossing was targeted,” said Dabbah Al-Mashaal, a Syrian official who oversees the crossing.

“We used to receive about 1,500 people a day, but today the number does not exceed 150,” he told AFP.

Lebanese authorities said on Friday that more than half a million people, mostly Syrians, had crossed into Syrian territory since Israel began heavily striking Lebanon late last month at the start of its all-out war with Hezbollah.

Six official land crossings connect the two countries, although there are many unofficial routes along the porous border.

Four connect Lebanon to Homs province to the northeast. The province is home to the city of Qusayr, which became a major hub for Hezbollah when it intervened in the Syrian civil war in support of President Bashar Assad.

At the Jousieh crossing on Monday, people were seen crossing into Syria on foot, carrying their belongings in plastic bags and pushing buggies, according to an AFP correspondent.

The Israeli army said on Friday that it had destroyed Hezbollah infrastructure at the crossing.

Israel has repeatedly accused the Iran-backed group of transferring weapons into Lebanon from Syria.

Since September 23, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 1,672 people, according to an AFP tally of nationwide health ministry figures though the real number is likely to be higher due to data gaps.

AN-AFP

BEIRUT — Israel’s military campaign in southern Lebanon has caused vast destruction in more than a dozen border towns and villages, reducing many of them to clusters of grey craters, according to satellite imagery provided to Reuters by Planet Labs Inc.

Many of the towns, emptied of their residents by the bombing, had been inhabited for at least two centuries.
The imagery reviewed includes towns between Kfarkela in southeastern Lebanon, south past Meiss al-Jabal, and then west past a base used by U.N. peacekeepers to the small village of Labbouneh.

“There are beautiful old homes, hundreds of years old. Thousands of artillery shells have hit the town, hundreds of air strikes,” said Abdulmonem Choukeir, mayor of Meiss al-Jabal, one of the villages hit by Israeli attacks.

“Who knows what will still be standing at the end?”

Reuters compared satellite images taken in October 2023 to those taken in September and October 2024. Many of the villages with striking visible damage over the course of the last month sit atop hills overlooking Israel.

After nearly a year of exchanging fire across the border, Israel intensified its strikes on southern Lebanon and beyond over the last month. Israeli troops have made ground incursions all along the mountainous frontier with Lebanon, engaging in heavy clashes with Hezbollah fighters inside some towns.

Lebanon’s disaster risk management unit, which tracks both victims and attacks on specific towns, said the 14 towns reviewed by Reuters had been subject to a total of 3,809 attacks by Israel over the last year.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond to Reuters questions about the scale of destruction. Israel’s military spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Oct. 24 that Israel has struck more than 3,200 targets in south Lebanon.

The military says it is attacking towns in southern Lebanon because Hezbollah has turned “civilian villages into fortified combat zones,” hiding weapons, explosives and vehicles there. Hezbollah denies using civilian infrastructure to launch attacks or store weapons, and residents of the towns deny the assertion.

A person familiar with Israel’s military operations in Lebanon told Reuters that troops were systematically attacking towns with strategic overlook points, including Mhaibib.

The person said that Israel had “learned lessons” after its last war with Hezbollah in 2006, including incidents in which troops making ground incursions into the valleys of southern Lebanon were attacked by Hezbollah fighters on hilltops.

“That is why they are targeting these villages so heavily – so they can move more freely,” the person said.

The most recent images of Kfarkela showed a string of white splotches along a main road leading into a town.
Imagery taken last year showed the same road lined with houses and green vegetation, indicating the houses had been pulverized.

Further south, Meiss al-Jabal, a town 700 meters (yards) away from the U.N.-demarcated Blue Line separating Israeli and Lebanese territory, suffered significant destruction to an entire block near the town centre.

The area, measuring approximately 150 meters by 400 metres, appeared as a swatch of sandy brown, signalling the buildings there had been entirely flattened.
Images from the same month in 2023 showed a densely packed neighbourhood of homes.

‘Any sign of life’

At least 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israel’s strikes and more than 2,600 have been killed over the last year – a vast majority in the last month, Lebanon’s government says.

Residents of the border villages have not been able to reach their hometowns in months. “After war came to Meiss al-Jabal, after the residents left, we no longer know anything about the state of the village,” Meiss al-Jabal’s mayor said.

Imagery of the nearby village of Mhaibib depicted similar levels of destruction.
Mhaibib is one of several villages – alongside Kfarkela, Aitaroun, Odaisseh, and Ramyeh – featured in footage shared on social media showing simultaneous explosions of several structures at once, indicating they had been laden with explosives.

Israel’s military spokesman said on Oct. 24 that a command centre for Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit lay under Mhaibib, and that Israeli troops had “neutralised the main tunnel network” used by the group, but did not give details.

Hagari has said that Israel’s goal is to “push Hezbollah away from the border, dismantle its capabilities, and eliminate the threat to northern residents” of Israel.

“This is a plan you take off the shelf,” said Jon Alterman, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. “Militaries plan, and they’re executing the plan.”

Seth Jones, another senior vice president at CSIS, had earlier told Reuters that Hezbollah used frontline villages to fire its shorter-range rockets into Israel.

Lubnan Baalbaki, the conductor of Lebanon’s philharmonic orchestra and son of late Lebanese artist Abdel-Hamid Baalbaki, said his family had been purchasing satellite imagery of their hometown of Odaisseh to check if the family house still stood.

The house had been transformed by Abdel-Hamid into a cultural centre, full of his art works, original sketches and more than 1,000 books in an all-wood library. Abdel-Hamid passed away in 2013 and was buried behind the house with his late wife.

“We’re a family of artists, my father is well-known, and our home was a known cultural home. We were trying to reassure ourselves with that thought,” Baalbaki, the son, told Reuters.

Until late October, the house still stood. But at the weekend Baalbaki saw a video circulating of several homes in Odaisseh, including his family’s, exploding.

The family is not affiliated to Hezbollah and Baalbaki denied that any weapons or military equipment were stored there.

“If you have such high-level intelligence that you can target specific military figures, then you know what’s in that house,” Baalbaki said. “It was an art house. We are all artists. The aim is to erase any sign of life.”

AN-REUTERS

UNITED NATIONS — More than 600 million women and girls are now affected by war, a 50 percent increase from a decade ago, and they fear the world has forgotten them amid an escalating backlash against women’s rights and gender equality, top UN officials say.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a new report that amid record levels of armed conflict and violence, progress over the decades for women is vanishing and “generational gains in women’s rights hang in the balance around the world.”

The UN chief was assessing the state of a Security Council resolution adopted on Oct. 31, 2000, that demanded equal participation for women in peace negotiations, a goal that remains as distant as gender equality.

Guterres said current data and findings show that “the transformative potential of women’s leadership and inclusion in the pursuit of peace” is being undercut — with power and decision-making on peace and security matters overwhelmingly in the hands of men.

“As long as oppressive patriarchal social structures and gender biases hold back half our societies, peace will remain elusive,” he warned.

The report says the proportion of women killed in armed conflicts doubled in 2023 compared with a year earlier; UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence were 50 percent higher; and the number of girls affected by grave violations in conflicts increased by 35 percent.

At a two-day UN Security Council meeting on the topic that ended Friday, Sima Bahous, head of the UN agency promoting gender equality known as UN Women, also pointed to a lack of attention to women’s voices in the search for peace.

She cited the fears of millions of women and girls in Afghanistan deprived of an education and a future; of displaced women in Gaza “waiting for death”; of women in Sudan who are victims of sexual violence; and of the vanishing hopes of women in Myanmar, Haiti, Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere.

Bahous said 612 million women and girls who are affected by war “wonder if the world has already forgotten them, if they have fallen from the agenda of an international community overwhelmed by crises of ever deeper frequency, severity and urgency.”

The world needs to answer their fears with hope, she said, but the reality is grim: “One in two women and girls in conflict-affected settings are facing moderate to severe food insecurity, 61 percent of all maternal mortality is concentrated in 35 conflict-affected countries.”

As for women’s participation in decision-making and politics in countries in conflict, Bahous said it’s stalled.

“The percentage of women in peace negotiations has not improved over the last decade: under 10 percent on average in all processes, and under 20 percent in processes led or supported by the United Nations,” she said.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed announced the launch of a “Common Pledge on Women’s Participation in Peace Processes,” and urged governments, regional organizations and others involved in mediation to join the UN in taking concrete steps toward that end.

The commitments include appointing women as lead mediators and team members, promoting direct and meaningful participation of women in peace processes, consulting women leaders at all stages and embedding women with expertise “to foster gender-responsive peace processes and agreements,” she said.

Many UN ambassadors who spoke at the council meeting focused on the lack of “political will” to promote women in the peace process.

“We’ve seen how the lack of political will continues to stand in the way of the full implementation of the commitments entered into by member states,” Panama’s UN Ambassador Eloy Alfaro de Alba said Friday.

AN-AP

TYRE, Lebanon — Thunderous booms followed by black columns of smoke in the sky, ancient ruins with no tourists, and a seashore without fishermen or beach-goers.

War has turned Lebanon’s idyllic port city of Tyre into a ghost town.

Tyre had been considered safe for much of the year in which Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel had been exchanging fire. But Israeli airstrikes this week led to fears that nowhere in Lebanon would be safe.

Near one of the three residential blocks reduced to rubble on Wednesday, a family loaded belongings into a car parked amid broken glass and debris.

Eight mattresses were stacked on the car roof, secured with rope.

The raids had torn the facades off surrounding structures, exposing bathroom pipes and entire kitchens to the outdoors.

Personal belongings were scattered everywhere – shoes, photographs, toys and clothes.

Tyre’s picturesque beaches were empty. Just last month, conservationists were helping endangered sea turtles lay eggs along the coastline but since then, Israel’s military warned against maritime activities, saying they could be targeted.

Khalil Ali, a 59-year-old fisherman, sits on a jetty and throws a fishing line hopelessly into the sea.

“We are very worried,” he said. “The situation might be like Gaza, and that Israel issues more evacuation orders that will force me to leave my hometown. It was not like this in 2006, this is very difficult. They did not destroy this much.”

More than 2,500 people have been killed by Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, and over 1.2 million have been forced from their homes, according to Lebanese authorities.

Tyre mayor Hassan Dabouq told Reuters only a quarter of the city’s residents remained, and many feared the destruction that had been wrought on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza was coming for them, too.

“It’s the same people, the same war, the same mentality, and the same (Israeli) officials, with the same support from the Americans and Europeans.

The elements are the same, so why would it be any different in Lebanon?” Dabouq said.

At Tyre’s port, dozens of vessels were docked on Wednesday morning. This area would normally be bustling with activity as fishermen brought in their catch to sell to merchants but now is eerily quiet. A few fishermen were present, not to fish, but to check on their boats.

Shops and restaurants were closed, and the fridges that once held fresh fish were empty and turned off.

VICIOUS WAR

Only those with nowhere else to go and those who felt a sense of duty to stay remained. One Tyre resident said she would rather stay in her hometown than die as a refugee.

Wael Mroueh, a 49-year-old nephrologist and director of the Jabal Amel Hospital, chose to stay. His hospital is one of only three still serving southern Lebanon.

Having lived through numerous wars, Mroueh remembers a childhood of bombings, explosions and destruction.

Determined not to subject his three children and loved ones to the same horrors, he made the decision to send them to safety further north while he remained behind.

“I fear I might never see them again because of this vicious war being waged against us,” he told Reuters at his hospital, covering his face as he broke down in tears.

Mattresses and personal belongings lay in hospital corridors. To convince some of his staff to stay on, Mroueh had allowed them to live there with their families.

Like the city itself, only a quarter of the hospital’s doctors had stayed. Just over one-third of the nurses did too.

Dressed in his white scrubs, Mroueh toured the ICU and the kidney dialysis unit to check on about 30 patients injured in the war, many of whom had serious injuries and were unconscious.

He sends patients who are stable enough for transfer to Beirut every day but as the conflict drags on, he is bracing himself – and preparing the hospital – for the worst.

He said there are troubling patterns in Israel’s actions in Lebanon that were similar to Gaza, particularly concerning the targeting of aid workers, medics, and hospitals.

Lebanon says 13 of its hospitals and more than 100 other health facilities have been put out of service by Israel’s strikes. The World Health Organization says more than 100 medics and rescue workers have been killed in the last year in Lebanon.

Mroueh sees those Israeli strikes as an attempt to strike at morale – but says it has not worn down his sense of responsibility.

“If everyone leaves, there will be no one left,” he said. “This is part of our resistance.”

REUTERS, Oct 24, 2024

GENEVA — The poverty rate across the Palestinian territories will almost double this year to 74.3 percent after months of fighting in Gaza, according to a report by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) released Tuesday.

“The immediate consequence of the war, not just in physical infrastructure destruction, but also in terms of poverty, livelihoods and loss of livelihoods, is enormous,” Achim Steiner, head of the UNDP, said.

The poverty rate had been 38.8 percent at the end of 2023 but another 2.61 million Palestinians fell into poverty this year, bringing the total to 4.1 million.

“It’s quite clear from this socio-economic assessment, that the level of destruction has set back the state of Palestine by years, if not decades, in terms of its development pathway,” Steiner said.

The study estimates that this year unemployment in the Palestinian territories could rise to 49.9 percent and that GDP will be 35.1 percent lower than without the war in Gaza.

He said that even if humanitarian aid is delivered each year, the Palestinian economy will not return to its pre-crisis levels for a decade or more.

Recovery will also require support to rebuild destroyed capital and the lifting of “stifling economic conditions.”

The study says Israel’s bombing campaign created 42 million tonnes of rubble in Gaza, creating major health risks. The destruction of solar panels is particularly dangerous given the lead and other heavy metals they release.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s bombing and ground offensives in Gaza have killed 42,603 people, a majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN considers reliable.

AN-AFP