Latest news with #HeidiLevine
NZ Herald
03-08-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
Rare aerial imagery shows displacement and destruction in Gaza
Members of the Jordanian Air Force look down over the Gaza Strip from an airdrop flight last week. Photo / Heidi Levine, For The Washington Post The Israel Defence Forces says it only targets militants. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas, saying the militants operate in populated areas. 'IDF actions are based on military necessity and in accordance to international law,' the IDF said in a statement at the weekend. Hamas fighters killed about 1200 people, Israel says, and took about 250 others back to Gaza as hostages in the 2023 attack. More than 450 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza. Sky News and BBC journalists who reported from aid flights from Jordan last week said they were told that Israel had prohibited filming Gaza from above. The organisations did not say how the directive had been conveyed. Sky reported that it was informed Israel could delay or cancel aid flights if its journalists filmed Gaza. The IDF declined to comment on the matter. The El-Helou International Hotel in Gaza City, seen from a Jordanian aid flight last Wednesday local time. Photo / Heidi Levine, For The Washington Post A Washington Post photojournalist was given no such instructions before boarding a Royal Jordanian Air Force flight last Wednesday local time. On a subsequent flight on Friday local time, a member of the Jordanian flight crew told her she was not allowed to film Gaza, only the airdrop. The imagery here is from the first (Wednesday) flight, when two Jordanian C-130 transport planes, in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates Air Force, dropped more than 16 tonnes of food and baby formula into Gaza, with Israel's permission. Most of the photographs were taken through the plane's windows, looking east towards Gaza City. Destroyed schools in Gaza, seen from a Jordanian aid flight. Photo / Heidi Levine, For The Washington Post A close-up shows seven schools flattened by Israeli strikes: al-Zahawi Preparatory School for Boys, Asdood Secondary School for Boys, Abo Thar al-Ghafary School, Julis Secondary School for Boys, al-Awda Primary School, Sarafand Preparatory Male School and Samy al-Alamy Male School. Tents for displaced people occupy the school courtyards. Photos posted on Facebook just days before the war began showed young students lined up there. A lone building standing in a lot occupied by displaced peoples' tents is El-Helou International Hotel, home to a cavernous ballroom adorned with gold gossamer and lit by chandeliers. It was once a popular venue for weddings and gatherings in the north of Gaza City. The ruins of Maqoussi Mosque and the Ministry of Economy in Gaza, seen from a Jordanian aid flight. Photo / Heidi Levine, For The Washington Post Rubble, collapsed buildings, and tent encampments occupy ground where Maqoussi Mosque and the Ministry of Economy stood. The mosque's dome slumps into its flattened roof. Next to the mosque stands the ruined facade of Sheikh Radwan Health Centre, a clinic destroyed earlier in the war that was run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. A zoomed-in image shows the ruins of the Jabalya refugee camp. Jabalya, the site of fierce fighting between Hamas and the Israeli military in previous conflicts, was effectively besieged by the Israeli military from October to December 2024. The delivery of food and water and access by civil defence and paramedics were mostly denied, and large swathes of the neighbourhood were demolished. An aerial view showing massive destruction and displacement in an area of Gaza City, photographed from a C-30 military aircraft belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force. Photo / Heidi Levine, For The Washington Post Adel, the Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot who flew the aid drop mission, said the sight of Gaza from the air 'made me shocked'. Adel saw 'growing' destruction compared with when he last flew over Gaza during the first round of airdrops last year, he added. He withheld his last name because he was not authorised to speak publicly. 'Everyone who will see this area will be shocked,' he added. 'We hope [for] this war to finish. We need to give them more and more food, because they are starving over there.' It was 'very sad' to see the Gaza Strip from above, Maher Halaseh, 36, a Royal Jordanian Air Force navigator who also took part in last year's airdrops, said on Friday. 'Everything is different. There's no buildings, nothing. A lot of tents on the shoreline. I start to see it when all the buildings were there. Nowadays, there's nothing. They are dying over there.' A closer look shows how hundreds of thousands of Gazans are living, in makeshift tents erected anywhere space can be found, including on the beach in Gaza's south. Humanitarian groups say the airdrops that resumed this week, while better than no aid at all, are much less efficient than sending aid by land. Aid organisations have called them 'an absolute last resort'. Instead, they have urged Israel to open land crossings and allow a high volume of trucks to enter Gaza. Israel says it does not restrict aid to Gaza. Jordan has become a staging area for the airdrop effort, with support from governments in the region and Europe, in response to escalating scenes of starvation. Airdrops are neither precision-guided nor do they come with the ability for organised distribution on the ground. In past waves of airdrops, heavy boxes of aid fatally crushed aid seekers and led them to the sea, where they drowned trying to reach food, health officials said. - Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine captured imagery of Gaza from a Jordanian Air Force aid flight.
Yomiuri Shimbun
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Iran Retaliates against Israel with Barrage of Ballistic Missiles
Heidi Levine/For The Washington Post First responders at the scene of a residential building in Ramat Gan, Israel, that was heavily damaged by Iran's barrage of ballistic missiles Friday. Iran unleashed a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel late Friday as it retaliated for the waves of Israeli strikes that killed top military leaders and nuclear scientists, and damaged a key uranium enrichment site. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced the start of the retaliatory attack in a recorded message carried by state television. 'We will not allow them to get away with this great crime they committed,' he said. 'The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic will deal heavy blows to this enemy.' Most of the missiles were intercepted or fell short, the Israel Defense Forces said Friday, but at least one appeared to have slammed into central Tel Aviv in an area where a major military base is located. 'Iran has crossed red lines by daring to fire missiles at civilian population centers in Israel,' Defense Minister Israel Katz said. 'We will continue to defend the citizens of Israel and will ensure that the Ayatollah regime pays a very heavy price for its criminal actions.' Israeli leaders have portrayed the campaign as a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear program. For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that only military force would denuclearize Iran. But after a year of crippling military and strategic setbacks, including the loss of key allies in Lebanon and Syria, Iran has a limited arsenal with which to fight back. And it's unclear how Tehran plans to match Israel's escalation, which could last days or weeks, according to Israeli officials. Iran and Israel, longtime rivals, began openly trading blows last year as part of the regional spillover from the war in Gaza. But the attacks – including an Israeli strike on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria – were more narrowly calibrated to avoid spiraling into a wider conflict. Now, Tehran is much more isolated, with its partner, Hezbollah, decimated in Lebanon and the regime it propped up in Syria gone. In October, Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel after a covert Israeli operation killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. But on Friday, the IDF said fewer than 100 missiles were launched from Iran, although around 40 people were injured in the strike, according to medics and emergency services in Israel. In Iran, the Israeli strikes 'crossed all red lines,' Ali Larijani, a prominent Iranian politician and adviser to the supreme leader, said in an interview with state television. Larijani spoke by phone, pledging: 'There are no limits left to respond to this crime, and the hand of divine vengeance will grip the brutal terrorist regime and its supporters.' Previous Israeli strikes targeted Iranian military sites and hardware, many of them far from major cities, but Friday's raids included attacks on military leaders at their homes in residential areas. 'This was in the center of Tehran, entire apartment buildings collapsed. So this was not the kind of restrained engagement we saw last year,' said Nicole Grajewski, an Iran researcher and nuclear policy fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Rescue teams in Tehran dug through the rubble for hours Friday at strike sites where senior military officials and nuclear scientists were targeted. At least 78 people were killed in the Israeli strikes across Iran on Friday, according to Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. It was not clear if that toll included both civilians and military forces. Among the senior officers killed were Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the IRGC Aerospace Forces; Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the army chief of staff who reported directly to the supreme leader; and Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, who was responsible for coordinating operations among Iran's military forces, according to Iranian broadcasters. Grajewski said the conflict could expand if Iran determines there was U.S. involvement in the attacks. 'It would give Iran more targets,' she said. In anticipation of the Israeli strikes, the Trump administration drew down the number of personnel it had in the region, scaling back diplomatic operations in Iraq, as the Pentagon authorized military families to withdraw from other places in the Middle East. Patriot and THAAD missile defense batteries, operated by U.S. military personnel and originally deployed under the Biden administration, participated in Israeli air defense Friday evening, according to U.S. defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. That represented a more limited participation in Israel's defense than last year, when American air and sea assets helped shoot down incoming Iranian missiles during two retaliatory Iranian attacks. Among Israel's targets Friday were enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, as well as a nuclear facility in Isfahan, according to Israeli officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. The agency's director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, told the U.N. Security Council that damage to Natanz had caused 'radioactive and chemical contamination at the site.' The potential impact on other facilities was unclear. There were reports of military activity around Fordow, but there was no confirmation it was hit. Iran had been in talks with the Trump administration to negotiate a new nuclear deal, after the U.S. president withdrew in his first term from a comprehensive agreement Tehran struck with world powers, including the United States under President Barack Obama. Iran's foreign minister and President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, were supposed to meet Sunday in Oman for another round of negotiations. 'There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,' Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday. 'Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.' Inside Iran, many residents were taking stock of the damage and preparing for the possibility of a drawn-out confrontation. The sheer scale of destruction from hours of relentless strikes that simultaneously hit multiple parts of the country appeared to initially frustrate the official Iranian response. In Tehran, state television broadcast back-to-back coverage of the strikes' aftermath, with correspondents reporting from rubble-strewn streets. Outside a residential building in central Tehran, a television reporter said that a number of civilians had been pulled from the rubble, including children. 'The rescue teams are now lifting debris from one unit that hasn't been cleared yet,' he said, gesturing to a partially collapsed building facade. 'A few minutes ago, the bodies of two martyrs, a woman and a young kid, were taken out,' he said. A small crowd gathered behind him to watch the rescue teams work. In the Saadat Abad neighborhood in northwestern Tehran, another strike targeted an apartment block that neighbors said housed some nuclear scientists. 'As you can see, the complex behind me has been badly hit. Three floors have collapsed,' a reporter said, adding that the force of the explosion triggered a fire and sent debris flying. Other Iranians described terrifying scenes that stretched into early dawn Friday. 'It was scary at some points at night, of course. We live very close to one of the targets in Nobonyad. I think it was a military target,' said 32-year-old Saba, a housewife who lives in a neighborhood on Tehran's northern edge. Neda, a swimming instructor from Tabriz, said the waves of attacks in her area seemed to grow louder as the day went on. Like Saba, Neda spoke on the condition that she be identified by only her first name because of fear of retribution. Now, Neda said, her neighbors are scrambling to prepare for what's expected to be another night of heavy strikes. 'I heard from friends that there is already a kilometers-long petrol line,' she said.
