Latest news with #KhamisAl-Rifi
GMA Network
18-07-2025
- Politics
- GMA Network
Israel's Netanyahu called Pope Leo after Gaza church strike, Vatican says
The flag of Vatican City flies as the damage is seen at the Holy Family Church which was hit in an Israeli strike on Thursday, in Gaza City July 18, 2025. REUTERS/Khamis Al-Rifi ROME, Italy - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Pope Leo on Friday, the Vatican said, a day after an Israeli strike on Gaza's sole Catholic church killed three people and injured several more. During the call, the pope renewed his appeal for a ceasefire and an end to the war in Gaza, and expressed his concern over the "dramatic" humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave, a Vatican statement said. Leo also stressed the urgent need to protect places of worship, the faithful, and all people in the Palestinian territories and Israel, the statement added. — Reuters
GMA Network
15-07-2025
- Health
- GMA Network
UN says 875 Palestinians have been killed near Gaza aid sites
Mourners bury the bodies of Palestinians from the Azzam family, killed in an overnight Israeli strike on their house, according to medics, at a plot of land due to the lack of space in Gaza's overcrowded cemeteries, in Gaza City July 15, 2025. (REUTERS/Khamis Al-Rifi) GENEVA —The United Nations (UN) rights office said on Tuesday it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and convoys run by other relief groups, including the UN. The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys. The GHF uses private U.S. security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a U.N.-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation. The GHF, which began distributing food packages in Gaza in late May after Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade, previously told Reuters that such incidents have not occurred on its sites and accused the U.N. of misinformation, which it denies. The GHF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest UN figures. "The data we have is based on our own information gathering through various reliable sources, including medical human rights and humanitarian organizations," Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva. The United Nations has called the GHF aid model "inherently unsafe" and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards. The GHF said on Tuesday it had delivered more than 75 million meals to Gaza Palestinians since the end of May, and that other humanitarian groups had "nearly all of their aid looted" by Hamas or criminal gangs. The Israeli army previously told Reuters in a statement that it was reviewing recent mass casualties and that it had sought to minimise friction between Palestinians and the Israel Defence Forces by installing fences and signs and opening additional routes. —Reuters The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has previously cited instances of violent pillaging of aid, and the U.N. World Food Programme said last week that most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by "hungry civilian communities".
GMA Network
05-06-2025
- Health
- GMA Network
Gaza doctors give their own blood to patients after scores gunned down seeking aid
A girl reacts as Palestinians evacuate the wounded from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/ Khamis Al-Rifi GENEVA — Doctors in the Gaza Strip are donating their own blood to save their patients after scores of Palestinians were gunned down while trying to get food aid, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday. Around 100 MSF staff protested outside the UN headquarters in Geneva against an aid distribution system in Gaza run by an Israeli-backed private company, which has led to chaotic scenes of mass carnage. "People need the basics of also need it in dignity," MSF Switzerland's director general, Stephen Cornish, told Reuters at the protest. "If you're fearing for your life, running with packages being mowed down, this is just something that is completely beyond everything we've ever seen," he said. "These attacks have killed were left to bleed out on the ground." Cornish said staff at one of the hospitals where MSF operates had to give blood as most Palestinians are now too poorly nourished to donate. Israel allowed the private Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to begin food distribution in Gaza last week, after having completely shut the Gaza Strip to all supplies since the beginning of March. Gaza authorities say at least 102 Palestinians were killed and nearly 500 wounded trying to get aid from the food distribution sites in the first eight days. Eyewitnesses have said Israeli forces fired on crowds. The Israeli military said Hamas militants were to blame for opening fire, though it acknowledged that on Tuesday, when at least 27 people died, that its troops had fired at "suspects" who approached their positions. The United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Wednesday supported by all other Council members, which would have called for an "immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza and unhindered access for aid. — Reuters
