Latest news with #ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS
CBC
04-05-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Missile fired by Yemen's Houthis lands near Israel's main airport
No significant damage caused, Israeli police say, but flight operations were halted Image | ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/YEMEN-AIRPORT Caption: A security officer stands at the entrance of Ben Gurion Airport following a missile attack launched from Yemen, in Tel Aviv on Sunday. (Nir Elias/Reuters) A missile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels toward Israel on Sunday landed near Ben Gurion Airport, the country's main international airport, sending a plume of smoke into the air and causing panic among passengers in the terminal building. Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis, who claimed responsibility for the missile strike, have recently intensified missile launches at Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. A senior Israeli police commander, Yair Hetzroni, showed reporters a crater caused by the impact of the missile, which airport authorities said had landed beside a road near a Terminal 3 parking lot. "You can see the scene right behind us here, a hole that opened up with a diameter of tens of metres and also tens of metres deep," Hetzroni said, adding that there was no significant damage. In a statement after the strike, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said: "Whoever harms us will be harmed sevenfold." Israel's Channel 12 News said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would meet security ministers and defence officials on Sunday to discuss a response. Most missile launches from Yemen have been intercepted by Israel's missile defence systems, apart from a strike that hit the major city of Tel Aviv last year. The military said it was investigating what happened with Sunday's launch, which caused sirens to be activated across central Israel, including nearby in Tel Aviv. A Reuters reporter at the airport, which is located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, heard sirens and saw passengers reacting by running toward safe rooms. Several people at the airport posted videos filmed on cellphones that showed a plume of black smoke clearly visible nearby, behind parked aircraft and airport buildings. Reuters has not verified the videos. The Israeli ambulance service said eight people were being taken to hospital, including a man in a mild to moderate condition with injuries to his limbs and two women in a mild condition with head injuries. U.S. strikes on Houthis Claiming responsibility for the strike, the Houthis' military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said Israel's main airport was "no longer safe for air travel." A spokesperson for the Israel Airports Authority said takeoffs and landings had resumed and that operations at Ben Gurion had returned to normal, after reports of air traffic being halted and access routes to the airport being blocked. However, flight operations were disrupted due to the missile, according to Ben Gurion's live air traffic site. Some flights, including by Air India, TUS Airways and Lufthansa Group, were cancelled. Others, including to U.S. airports Newark in New Jersey and JFK in New York, were delayed by about 90 minutes. A Reuters reporter boarded a flight to Dubai that was on time. Sunday's strike came as Israeli ministers were reported to be close to signing off on plans to expand the military operation in Gaza, which resumed in March following a two-month truce, drawing a pledge from the Houthis to hit Israel with more missiles. Efforts to revive the ceasefire have so far faltered, and U.S. President Donald Trump in March ordered large-scale strikes against the Houthis to reduce their capabilities and deter them from targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The Houthis, who control swaths of Yemen, began targeting Israel and Red Sea shipping in late 2023, during the early days of the war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip. The war was triggered by Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's offensive on Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and destroyed much of the enclave, Palestinian health authorities say. The U.S. strikes on the rebel group, which have killed hundreds of people in Yemen, have been the biggest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since Trump took office in January.
CBC
28-04-2025
- General
- CBC
Israel flattens remains of Rafah ruins as latest strikes on Gaza hit 3 homes
UN agencies say Gazans on precipice of mass hunger and disease, with conditions reported at their worst Image | ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/GAZA Caption: A Palestinian man sits on debris while covering his face with his hand at the site of an Israeli strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. (Hatem Khaled/Reuters) Israel's army is flattening the remaining ruins of the city of Rafah on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, residents say, in what they fear is a part of a plan to herd the population into confinement in a giant camp on the barren ground. No food or medical supplies have reached the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip in nearly two months, since Israel imposed what has since become its longest ever total blockade of the territory, following the collapse of a six-week ceasefire. Israel relaunched its ground campaign in mid-March and has since seized swathes of land and ordered residents out of what it says are "buffer zones" around Gaza's edges, including all of Rafah, which comprises around 20 percent of the Strip. Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Saturday that the military was setting up a new "humanitarian zone" in Rafah, to which civilians would be moved after security checks to keep out Hamas fighters. Aid would be distributed by private companies. The Israeli military has yet to comment on the report and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Residents said massive explosions could now be heard unceasingly from the dead zone where Rafah once stood as a city of 300,000 people. "Explosions never stop, day and night, whenever the ground shakes, we know they are destroying more homes in Rafah. Rafah is gone," Tamer, a Gaza City man displaced in Deir al-Balah, farther north, told Reuters by text message. He said he was getting phone calls from friends as far away as across the border in Egypt whose children were being kept awake by the explosions. Abu Mohammed, another displaced man in Gaza, told Reuters by text: "We are terrified that they could force us into Rafah, which is going to be like a cage of a concentration camp, completely sealed off from the world." 27 Palestinians reported killed in latest strikes Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight into Monday killed at least 27 Palestinians, according to local health officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. An airstrike hit a home in Beit Lahiya, killing 10 people, including a Palestinian prisoner, Abdel-Fattah Abu Mahadi, who had been released as part of the ceasefire. His wife, two of their children and a grandchild were also killed, according to the Indonesian Hospital, which received the bodies. Another strike hit a home in Gaza City, killing seven people, including two women, according to the Gaza Health Ministry's emergency service. Two other people were wounded. Late Sunday, a strike hit a home in the southern city of Khan Younis, killing at least 10 people, including five siblings as young as four years old, according to the Health Ministry. Two other children were killed along with their parents, according to Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies. Gaza on precipice of mass hunger, disease: UN Israel, which imposed its total blockade on Gaza on March 2, says enough supplies reached the territory in the previous six weeks of the truce that it does not believe the population is at risk. It says it cannot allow in food or medicine because Hamas fighters would exploit it. United Nations agencies say Gazans are on the precipice of mass hunger and disease, with conditions now at their worst since the war began on Oct.7, 2023, when Hamas fighters attacked Israeli communities. The UN's highest court began holding hearings on Monday into Israel's obligation to facilitate humanitarian aid to the territories it occupies. WATCH | At least 23 killed in overnight strikes on school shelter last week: Media Video | Deadly Israeli strikes set tents ablaze in Gaza City school-turned-shelter Caption: At least 23 Palestinians sheltering inside of a school in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City were killed in Israeli strikes overnight Wednesday. The strikes set fire to tents and classrooms, leaving behind extensive damage. Open Full Embed in New Tab Loading external pages may require significantly more data usage than loading CBC Lite story pages. Talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to extend the ceasefire, during which Hamas released 38 hostages and Israel released hundreds of prisoners and detainees. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in Gaza; fewer than half of them believed to be alive. Hamas says it would free them only under a deal that ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to temporary pauses in fighting unless Hamas is completely disarmed, which the fighters reject. In Doha, Qatar's prime minister said on Sunday that efforts to reach a new ceasefire in Gaza had made some progress. On Friday, the World Food Program said it had run out of food stocks in Gaza after the longest closure the Gaza Strip had ever faced. Some residents toured the streets looking for weeds that grow naturally on the ground; others picked up dry leaves from trees. Desperate enough, fishermen turned to catching turtles, skinning them and selling their meat. The Gaza war started after Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza in the October, 2023 attacks, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's offensive on the enclave has killed more than 51,400, according to Palestinian health officials.
CBC
04-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
U.S. sending Israel more than 20,000 assault rifles that Biden had delayed: sources
Biden administration delayed sale over concerns weapons could be used by extremist Israeli settlers Image | ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/USA-ARMS Caption: Members of Israeli forces stand guard outside the Israeli military prison Ofer, near Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Feb. 8, 2025. The Trump administration moved forward with the sale of more than 20,000 U.S.-made assault rifles to Israel last month after it had been delayed by former president Joe Biden. (Ammar Awad/Reuters) The Trump administration moved forward with the sale of more than 20,000 U.S.-made assault rifles to Israel last month, according to a document seen by Reuters and a source familiar with the matter — a sale the administration of former president Joe Biden delayed over concerns they could be used by extremist Israeli settlers. The State Department sent a notification to Congress on March 6 of the $24-million US sale of the Colt Carbine 5.56 mm calibre fully automatic rifles, saying the end user would be the Israeli National Police, according to the document. The rifle sale is a small transaction next to the billions of dollars' worth of weapons that Washington supplies to Israel. But it drew attention when the Biden administration delayed the sale over concerns that the weapons could end up in the hands of Israeli settlers, some of whom have attacked Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Biden administration had imposed sanctions on individuals and entities accused of committing violence in the West Bank, which has seen a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians. On his first day in office on Jan. 20, Trump issued an executive order rescinding the sanctions on the settlers. Since then, his administration has approved the sale of billions of dollars' worth of weapons to Israel. The March 6 congressional notification said the U.S. government had taken into account "political, military, economic, human rights, and arms control considerations." The State Department did not provide comment when asked whether the administration sought assurances from Israel on the use of the weapons. Netanyahu and Trump's close ties Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel has occupied the West Bank, which Palestinians want as the core of an independent state, and has built settlements that most countries deem illegal. Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical ties to the land. Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began over a year ago. Trump has forged close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pledging to back Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. His administration has in some cases pushed ahead with Israel arms sales despite requests from Democratic U.S. lawmakers that the sales be paused until they received more information. The U.S. Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected a bid to block $8.8 billion in arms sales to Israel over human rights concerns, voting 82-15 and 83-15 to reject two resolutions of disapproval over sales of massive bombs and other offensive military equipment. The resolutions were offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats. The rifle sale had been put on hold after Democratic lawmakers objected and sought information on how Israel planned to use them. The congressional committees eventually cleared the sale, but the Biden administration kept the hold in place. The latest episode in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began with a Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, with gunmen killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's retaliatory campaign has so far killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities say. Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right member of Netanyahu's government, oversees the Israeli police force. The Times of Israel newspaper reported in November 2023 that his ministry put "a heavy emphasis on arming civilian security squads" in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks.
