Latest news with #Daral-ArqamSchool
Al Jazeera
08-04-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Fear is not a word that can describe what we feel in Gaza
Last week, during another violent night, my almost four-year-old niece asked me a question I'll never forget. 'If we die while sleeping… will it still hurt?' I didn't know what to say. How do you tell a child — who has seen more death than daylight — that dying in your sleep is a mercy? So I told her: 'No. I don't think so. That's why we should fall asleep now.' She nodded quietly, and turned her face to the wall. She believed me. She closed her eyes. I sat in the dark, listening to the bombs, wondering how many children were being buried alive just down the street. I have 12 nieces and nephews. All are under the age of nine. They have been my solace and joy in these dark times. But I, like their parents, struggle to help them make sense of what is going on around us. We have had to lie to them so many times. They would often believe us, but sometimes they would feel in our voices or our stares that something terrifying was happening. They would feel the horror in the air. No child should ever have to endure such brutality. No parent should have to cower in despair, knowing they cannot protect their children. Last month, the ceasefire ended, and with it, the illusion of a pause. What followed wasn't just a resumption of war — it was a shift to something more brutal and relentless. In the span of three weeks, Gaza has become a field of fire, where no one is safe. More than 1,400 men, women and children have been slaughtered. Daily massacres have shattered what remained of our ability to hope. Some of them have hit home. Not just emotionally. Physically. Just yesterday, the air was filled with dust and the smell of blood from just a few streets away. The Israeli army targeted al-Nakheel Street in Gaza City, killing 11 people, including five children. A few days earlier, at Dar al-Arqam School, a place that had sheltered displaced families, an Israeli air strike turned classrooms into ash. At least 30 people were killed in seconds—mostly women and children. They had come there seeking safety, believing the blue United Nations flag would protect them. It didn't. The school is less than 10 minutes away from my home. The same day, the nearby Fahd School was also bombarded; three people were killed. A day earlier, there was news of a horror scene in Jabalia. An Israeli strike targeted a clinic run by the UNRWA, where civilians were sheltering. Eyewitnesses described body parts strewn across the clinic. Children burned alive. An infant decapitated. The smell of burning flesh suffocating the survivors. It was a massacre in a place meant for healing. Amid all this, parts of Gaza City received evacuation orders. Evacuate. Now. But to where? Gaza has no safe zones. The north is levelled. The south is bombed. The sea is a prison. The roads are death traps. We stayed. It is not because we are brave. It is because we have nowhere else to go. Fear is not the right word to describe what we feel in Gaza. Fear is manageable. Fear can be named. What we feel is a choking, silent terror that sits inside your chest and never leaves. It is the moment between a missile's whistle and the impact, when you wonder if your heart has stopped. It is the sound of children crying from under the rubble. The smell of blood spreading with the wind. It is the question my niece asked. Foreign governments and politicians call it a 'conflict'. A 'complex situation'. A 'tragedy'. But what we are living through is not complex. It is a plain massacre. What we are living through is not a tragedy. It is a war crime. I am a writer. A journalist. I've spent months writing, documenting, calling out to the world through my words. I have sent dispatches. I have told stories no one else could. And yet — so often — I feel like I am screaming into a void. Still, I keep writing. Because even if the world looks away, I will not let our truth remain unspoken. Because I believe someone is listening. Somewhere. I write because I believe in humanity, even when governments have turned their backs on it. I write so that when history is written, no one can say they didn't know. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
Times of Oman
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Times of Oman
Oman condemns ongoing aggression by Israeli forces in Gaza Strip
Muscat: The Sultanate of Oman has condemned the ongoing aggression launched by the Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip, and the accompanying deliberate targeting of innocent civilians, including the bombing of a shelter centre affiliated with Dar al-Arqam School in the north-eastern Tuffah district of Gaza City, and the destruction of a warehouse for medical and relief supplies belonging to the Saudi Center for Culture and Heritage. In a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry on Friday, the Sultanate of Oman renewed its appeal to the international community and the Security Council to take decisive measures to protect civilians, halt these ongoing and serious violations of international law, and achieve justice for the Palestinian people by ending the Israeli occupation of their lands and enabling them to achieve their legitimate rights, foremost among which is the establishment of an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Israel expands ground offensive in Gaza
The Israeli military announced the launch of a new ground offensive in Gaza City on Friday to expand the security zone it has established in the Palestinian territory. Israel has pushed since the collapse of a short-lived truce in the war with Hamas to seize territory in Gaza in what it has called a strategy to force the militants to free hostages still in captivity. Simultaneously, it has escalated attacks on Lebanon and Syria, with a strike in the south Lebanese city of Sidon killing a Hamas commander along with his adult son and daughter, according to the military. In Gaza City, the Israeli military said ground troops had begun conducting operations in the Shejaiya area "in order to expand the security zone". Defence Minister Israel Katz had said on Wednesday that Israel would bolster its military presence inside the Gaza Strip to "destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure". The operation would "seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones", he said, without specifying how much territory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was dividing Gaza and "seizing territory" to force Hamas to free the remaining Israeli hostages seized in the militant group's October 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the Gaza war. On Thursday, Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 31 people, including children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a school serving as a shelter for displaced Palestinians. Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that women and children were among the dead, while six people were still unaccounted for in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City. "One of the missing was a pregnant woman who was expecting twins," he said. The Israeli military said it had struck a "Hamas command and control centre in the area of Gaza City". It was unclear whether it was the same attack that hit the school. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on March 18, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,523. - Lebanon strike - In Lebanon, Israel said it killed a Hamas commander in a strike on the port city of Sidon that also killed his adult son and daughter. "Overnight, the (army and the domestic security agency Shin Bet) conducted a targeted strike in the Sidon area, eliminating the terrorist Hassan Farhat, commander of Hamas's western arena in Lebanon," the Israeli military said in a statement. It alleged that Farhat had orchestrated multiple attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians during the hostilities that followed the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023. They included rocket fire on the Israeli town of Safed on February 14, 2024 that killed an Israeli soldier, the military added. An AFP correspondent saw the fourth-floor flat still on fire after the strike, which caused heavy damage to the apartment block and neighbouring buildings and sparked panic in the densely populated neighbourhood. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the strike as a "flagrant attack on Lebanese sovereignty" and a breach of the November 27 ceasefire in the war between militant group Hezbollah and Israel. Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah spiralled into all-out conflict last September, and the group remains a target of Israeli air strikes despite the ceasefire. Under the truce, Hezbollah is supposed to redeploy its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south. Israel is supposed to withdraw its forces across the UN-demarcated Blue Line, the de facto border, but has missed two deadlines to do so and continues to hold five positions it deems "strategic". In Syria, it has conducted strikes on military targets across the country this week, defying a United Nations warning that such attacks "undermine efforts to build a new Syria" following president Bashar al-Assad's ouster in December. bur-ser/kir
Daily Tribune
04-04-2025
- Daily Tribune
Children among 31 killed in Israel strike on shelter
AFP | Gaza City Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 31 people, including children, were killed in an Israeli strike yesterday on a school serving as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war. Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that women and children were among the dead, while six people were still unaccounted for in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the AlTuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City. Bassal had said earlier that more than 100 others were wounded in the attack. Pregnant woman 'One of the missing was a pregnant woman who was expecting twins,' he said. The Israeli military said in a statement it had struck a 'Hamas command and control centre in the area of Gaza City'. It was unclear whether it was the same attack that targeted the school. The military said it was unable to confirm whether the strike had hit the school. Innocent civilians Hamas condemned the attack, accusing the Israeli government of continuing its 'targeting of innocent civilians as part of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip'. Since the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip triggered by Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge in schools and other facilities to escape the deadly violence.
Saba Yemen
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
Hamas: US Administration Complicit in Dar al-Arqam School Massacre in Gaza
Gaza – Saba: The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, said that "the heinous massacre committed by the Israeli enemy army by bombing Dar al-Arqam School in Gaza City constitutes a new brutal crime perpetrated by Tel Aviv in partnership with and under the cover of the United States." The movement added in a statement Thursday evening that "these heinous crimes are being committed by the war criminal Netanyahu and his fascist government, with criminal American political and military cover, making the US administration a direct partner in their commission." Whatsapp Telegram Email Print more of (International)
