Latest news with #OmarAL-QATTAA
eNCA
26-05-2025
- Politics
- eNCA
Gaza rescuers say 52 killed in Israeli strikes, including 33 in a school
Rescuers said Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 52 people on Monday, 33 of them in a school-turned-shelter, as European allies ramped up their criticism of Israel. While the war raged on, mediators presented a proposal for a 70-day ceasefire and hostage-release deal to Israel and Hamas, a Palestinian source said. The territory's civil defence agency said many of the casualties at the school in Gaza City were children, while the Israeli military said the site was housing "key terrorists". Israel has stepped up a renewed offensive to destroy Hamas, drawing international condemnation as aid trickles in following a blockade since early March that has sparked severe food and medical shortages. It has also triggered international criticism, with European and Arab leaders meeting in Spain calling for an end to the "inhumane" and "senseless" war, while humanitarian groups said the trickle of aid was not nearly enough. In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced unusually strong criticism of Israel, saying: "I no longer understand what the Israeli army is now doing in the Gaza Strip, with what goal." The impact on Gazan civilians "can no longer be justified", he added. AFP | Omar AL-QATTAA Nevertheless, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin would continue selling weapons to Israel. In Gaza City, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an early-morning Israeli strike on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi school, where displaced people were sheltering, killed "at least 33, with dozens injured, mostly children". The Israeli military said it had "struck key terrorists who were operating within a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre embedded in an area", adding that "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians". Another strike killed at least 19 people in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, Bassal said. - Truce proposal - A Palestinian source meanwhile said that mediators proposed a 70-day ceasefire and the release of 10 Israeli hostages alongside some Palestinian prisoners. AFP | Omar AL-QATTAA A Hamas source said shortly after that the group had accepted the proposal for what would be the war's third truce, saying it came from US envoy Steve Witkoff. The Israeli military said on Monday that over "the past 48 hours, the (air force) struck over 200 targets throughout the Gaza Strip". It also said it had detected three projectiles launched from Gaza toward communities in Israel Monday, as the country prepared to celebrate Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking its capture of the city's eastern sector in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. "Two projectiles fell in the Gaza Strip and one additional projectile was intercepted," it said. Later on Monday, it issued an evacuation order for areas of Khan Yunis, saying they had been the site of rocket launches. AFP | Eyad BABA The same day, as Arab and European nations gathered to seek an end to the war, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel. He also called for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza "massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel", describing the territory as humanity's "open wound". - 'Hunger, desperation' - Israel last week partially eased an aid blockade on Gaza that had exacerbated widespread shortages of food and medicine. COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that coordinates civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that "107 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid... were transferred" into Gaza on Sunday. But aid agencies insist that is nowhere near enough, at just a fraction of what was allowed in during a two-month ceasefire. AFP | Menahem Kahana While Israel has restricted aid into Gaza, the war has made growing food next to impossible, with the UN saying on Monday just five percent of Gaza's farmland was now useable. Meanwhile, Jake Wood, the head of a US-backed group preparing to move aid into Gaza, announced his resignation, saying it was impossible to do his job in line with principles of neutrality and independence. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has vowed to distribute about 300 million meals in its first 90 days of operation, and said in a statement it would begin "direct aid delivery" on Monday. The UN and international aid agencies have said they will not cooperate with GHF and have heavily criticised its plans. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that at least 3,822 people had been killed in the territory since a ceasefire collapsed on March 18, taking the war's overall toll to 53,977, mostly civilians. Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
The Star
25-05-2025
- General
- The Star
Uninterrupted flow of aid only way to prevent worsening Gaza disaster, says UNRWA
A woman carrying jerrycans walks along Palestinians transporting their belongings as they flee the northern Gaza Strip toward the south, along the coastal al-Rashid road on Sunday, May 25, 2025. Rescuers in Gaza said eight people were killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli air strikes across the Palestinian territory on May 25. -- Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP NEW YORK (Bernama-QNA): The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has warned that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will deepen unless the uninterrupted flow of aid is ensured. In a post on the X platform on Sunday, UNRWA said the Israeli blockade -- now in its third month -- has crippled relief efforts and pushed the enclave into deeper crisis, Qatar news agency (QNA) reported. It said Gaza urgently needs between 500 to 600 aid trucks daily, coordinated by the United Nations (UN). "Uninterrupted flow of aid into Gaza is the only way to prevent the current disaster from spiraling further,' the agency stressed. Crossings have remained shut since March 2, leaving vital supplies stranded at the border. UNRWA said Palestinians can no longer afford to wait, as food and medical shortages worsen daily. Over the past 80 days, 58 people have died from malnutrition, and 242 others -- mostly children and the elderly -- have died from lack of food and medicine. The blockade has pushed Gaza's 2.4 million people to the brink of famine. In recent days, Israeli forces have launched ground operations in both the north and south of Gaza, worsening the situation further. -- Bernama-QNA
eNCA
27-04-2025
- Politics
- eNCA
Hamas says open to 5-year Gaza truce, one-time hostages release
GAZA - Hamas is open to an agreement to end the war in Gaza that would see all hostages released and secure a five-year truce, an official said on Saturday as the group's negotiators held talks with mediators. A Hamas delegation visited Cairo to discuss with Egyptian mediators ways out of the 18-month war while, on the ground, rescuers said Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 35 people. Nearly eight weeks into an Israeli aid blockade, the United Nations says food and medical supplies are running out in the territory. The Hamas official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the Palestinian militant group "is ready for an exchange of prisoners in a single batch and a truce for five years". A statement later from Hamas said its delegation had left Cairo on Saturday evening. The latest bid to seal a ceasefire follows an Israeli proposal Hamas rejected earlier this month as "partial". The new proposal calls instead for a "comprehensive" agreement to halt the war ignited by the group's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The rejected Israeli offer, according to a senior Hamas official, included a 45-day ceasefire in exchange for the return of 10 living hostages. AFP | Omar AL-QATTAA Hamas has consistently demanded that a truce deal must lead to the war's end, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a surge in humanitarian aid. An Israeli pullout and a "permanent end to the war" would also have occurred -- as outlined by then-US president Joe Biden -- under a second phase of a ceasefire that had begun on January 19 but which collapsed two months later. Hamas had sought talks on the second phase but Israel wanted the first phase extended. Israel demands the return of all hostages seized in the 2023 attack, and Hamas's disarmament, which the group has rejected as a "red line". "This time we will insist on guarantees regarding the end of the war," Mahmud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official, said in a statement. "The occupation can return to war after any partial deal, but it cannot do so with a comprehensive deal and international guarantees." Later on Saturday, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan reiterated that "any proposal that does not include a comprehensive and permanent cessation of the war will not be considered." "We will not abandon the resistance's weapons as long as the occupation persists", he said in a statement. 'The house collapsed' Israel pounded Gaza again on Saturday. Mohammed al-Mughayyir, an official with the territory's civil defence rescue agency, told AFP that the death toll had risen to at least 35. In Gaza City, in the territory's north, civil defence said a strike on the Khour family home killed 10 people and left an estimated 20 more trapped in the debris. AFP | Eyad BABA Umm Walid al-Khour, who survived the attack, said "everyone was sleeping with their children" when the strike hit and "the house collapsed on top of us." Elsewhere across Gaza, 25 more people were killed, rescuers said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the latest strikes but it said that "1,800 terror targets" had been hit across Gaza since the military campaign resumed on March 18. The military added that "hundreds of terrorists" were also killed. Qatar, the United States and Egypt brokered the truce which began on January 19 and enabled a surge in aid, alongside exchanges of hostages and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. With Israel and Hamas disagreeing over the ceasefire's next phase, Israel cut all aid to Gaza before resuming bombardment, followed by a ground offensive. Gazans 'slowly dying' Since then, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 2,111 Palestinians have been killed, taking the overall war death toll in Gaza to 51,495 people, mostly civilians. AFP | Jack GUEZ The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead. Israel says the military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives. On Friday, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said the hot meal kitchens it was supplying with food in Gaza "are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days". On Saturday, AFP footage showed queues of people waiting for food in front of a community kitchen. "There is no food in the free kitchen, there is no food in the markets... There is no flour or bread," said north Gaza resident Wael Odeh. A senior UN official, Jonathan Whittall, said Gazans were "slowly dying".
