Latest news with #YousefHammash
Channel 4
03-06-2025
- General
- Channel 4
Israel accused of second mass killing of Gazans seeking aid
They went to Rafah, desperate for aid to feed their starving families, directed there by Israel. And for a third day, they came under fire. 27 killed today, after three yesterday and as many as 31 on Sunday. This, in addition to the dozens more people killed by air strikes across the Strip. The Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has opened four so-called 'Safe Distribution Sites' in Gaza. The latest shooting happened near a roundabout. Israel's military said it opened fire on people who left a designated access route that leads to the only site giving out aid. That site in southern Rafah distributed only 21 truckloads of food on Tuesday, despite widespread hunger and starvation. A warning, this report contains distressing scenes. Producers: Zahra Warsame and Yousef Hammash Picture Editor: Ricardo Macelino
Channel 4
02-06-2025
- Health
- Channel 4
Timeline: How Gaza aid attack which killed 31 people happened
Health officials in Gaza say at least three more Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded near an aid distribution point operated by a US-backed group. At least 31 people were reportedly killed on Sunday as they tried to get food near the same site in Rafah. Survivors told the Medecins Sans Frontieres aid agency that they were shot from all sides by drones, helicopters, boats, tanks and Israeli soldiers. Israel's military denied firing at people gathering to collect aid. Producers: Zahra Warsame and Yousef Hammash Editor: Sophie Larkin Graphics: Sam Wapples
Channel 4
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Channel 4
Hamas reviewing ceasefire deal as Israel continues bombing Gaza
Hamas says it is still reviewing a new US proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza – even though it says it doesn't meet Palestinian demands. Israel has reportedly agreed to a 60-day truce, aid for Gaza and a hostage and prisoner exchange. But that hasn't stopped its military ordering civilians to immediately leave five more areas of northern Gaza, or continuing its bombing campaign. Produced by Millicent Teasdale and Yousef Hammash Edited by Alastair Fergusson
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Ambulances, school and TikTok: The lives of three children I filmed surviving Gaza war
Zakaria is 11 years old and lives in Gaza. He reckons he has seen thousands of bodies since the war started. But at an age when children are typically found in a classroom, Zakaria is volunteering at one of Gaza's few functioning hospitals - al-Aqsa. As a succession of ambulances ferrying victims of the war between Israel and Hamas pull up outside the facility in the central town of Deir al-Balah, Zakaria clears a way through the crowds to retrieve newly arrived patients and rush them inside for treatment. Moments later he is running through the corridors of the hospital with a stretcher and later carries a young child inside to the emergency room. Several of his schoolfriends have been killed since the conflict started and hanging around the hospital means Zakaria witnesses shocking scenes. He says that once, after an Israeli strike, he saw a boy in front of him burn to death in a fire. "I must have seen at least 5,000 bodies. I saw them with my own eyes," he tells our cameraman. Zakaria is one of the children and young people we spent nine months following for our BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. It's a film that my colleague Yousef Hammash and I co-directed from London, because international journalists have not been allowed by Israel to enter the Gaza Strip and report independently since the start of the war 16 months ago. To gather the footage and the interviews, we employed two cameramen who live in Gaza - Amjad Al Fayoumi and Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba - communicating with them regularly using messaging apps, internet calls and mobile phone networks. Yousef and I wanted to make this documentary to show what everyday life is like for Gazan people trying to survive the horrors of this conflict as it unfolded. We finished filming a few weeks ago, on the day the current ceasefire started. We focused on three children and a young woman with a newborn because they are the innocents in this war, which came to a shaky pause on 19 January when a hostage release deal between Hamas and Israel took effect. More than 48,200 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel's offensive, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The military action followed the attacks on southern Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. By and large we filmed in an area of southern and central Gaza earmarked by Israel's army as a "humanitarian zone", where Palestinians were told to go for their own safety. Despite its designation, the zone itself was struck almost 100 times between May 2024 and January this year, according to analysis by BBC Verify. The Israel Defense Forces said it was targeting Hamas fighters operating there. We wanted to know how children found food, decided where to sleep and how they occupied themselves while trying to survive. Abdullah, 13, narrates the film. He speaks excellent English having attended the British school in Gaza before the war and does all he can to keep going with his education. Renad, 10, does a cooking show on TikTok with the help of her older sister. They make many kinds of dishes, even though the war means they can't get the proper ingredients, and have more than one million followers. We also followed Rana, 24, who has given birth to a baby girl prematurely. She has been displaced three times and lives near the hospital with her two sons and her parents. Some of the film also looks at how medics fought to keep people alive in al-Aqsa hospital, which was described in January 2024 by British doctors as the only functioning hospital in central Gaza. That's where we found Zakaria. Everyone working at the hospital knows the boy. He is, of course, still a child and not a qualified medic but he is always hanging around, waiting for an opportunity to help someone, in the hope he might receive some food or money in return. Sometimes he helps carry equipment for local journalists, other times stretchers with people injured or dying. When there is a quiet moment he helps clean the blood and dirt from the ambulances. There is no school for him to go to and he is the only person in his family making any money. He doesn't stay with them as they have little food or water, he says, and instead lives on his own at the hospital and sleeps where he can. One night it's in the CT scan room, another in the journalists' tent or the back of an ambulance. There were plenty of nights he fell asleep hungry. As much as they try, hospital staff can't keep him away from the chaos of caring for casualties. Zakaria idolises the paramedics and wants to be considered part of the team. One of them, Said, takes him under his wing. Whenever he treats Zakaria as a child, he says, the boy gets upset. Other staff see the care and attention Zakaria pays to them and the patients in the hospital and teach him to give someone an IV drip. In recognition of his efforts, they even make him a miniature set of blue scrubs – which he takes great pride in. Said tries to ensure the boy still gets a semblance of childhood and in the film we follow them on a trip to the beach. Sitting under the fronds of a tree branch, Zakaria tucks into the lunch Said has bought. The shawarma, he says, is perfect. Said jokes it's the only time the boy ever "shuts up". But Said worries Zakaria has seen so much death and destruction that he may never fit in with children his age again. Zakaria is himself looking beyond childhood. "I want to be a paramedic," he says. "But first I need to get out of here." As told to George Sandeman Watch - Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is on BBC Two and iPlayer at 21:00 on 17 February (UK-only) Starved, threatened and abused: Parents of freed Hamas hostages give details of ordeal Confusion clouds efforts to save Gaza ceasefire Paul Adams: Why the Gaza ceasefire is under growing strain
Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Ambulances, school and TikTok: The lives of three children I filmed surviving Gaza war
Zakaria is 11 years old and lives in Gaza. He reckons he has seen thousands of bodies since the war started. But at an age when children are typically found in a classroom, Zakaria is volunteering at one of Gaza's few functioning hospitals - al-Aqsa. As a succession of ambulances ferrying victims of the war between Israel and Hamas pull up outside the facility in the central town of Deir al-Balah, Zakaria clears a way through the crowds to retrieve newly arrived patients and rush them inside for treatment. Moments later he is running through the corridors of the hospital with a stretcher and later carries a young child inside to the emergency room. Several of his schoolfriends have been killed since the conflict started and hanging around the hospital means Zakaria witnesses shocking scenes. He says that once, after an Israeli strike, he saw a boy in front of him burn to death in a fire. "I must have seen at least 5,000 bodies. I saw them with my own eyes," he tells our cameraman. Zakaria is one of the children and young people we spent nine months following for our BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. It's a film that my colleague Yousef Hammash and I co-directed from London, because international journalists have not been allowed by Israel to enter the Gaza Strip and report independently since the start of the war 16 months ago. To gather the footage and the interviews, we employed two cameramen who live in Gaza - Amjad Al Fayoumi and Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba - communicating with them regularly using messaging apps, internet calls and mobile phone networks. Yousef and I wanted to make this documentary to show what everyday life is like for Gazan people trying to survive the horrors of this conflict as it unfolded. We finished filming a few weeks ago, on the day the current ceasefire started. We focused on three children and a young woman with a newborn because they are the innocents in this war, which came to a shaky pause on 19 January when a hostage release deal between Hamas and Israel took effect. More than 48,200 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel's offensive, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The military action followed the attacks on southern Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. By and large we filmed in an area of southern and central Gaza earmarked by Israel's army as a "humanitarian zone", where Palestinians were told to go for their own safety. Despite its designation, the zone itself was struck almost 100 times between May 2024 and January this year, according to analysis by BBC Verify. The Israel Defense Forces said it was targeting Hamas fighters operating there. We wanted to know how children found food, decided where to sleep and how they occupied themselves while trying to survive. Abdullah, 13, narrates the film. He speaks excellent English having attended the British school in Gaza before the war and does all he can to keep going with his education. Renad, 10, does a cooking show on TikTok with the help of her older sister. They make many kinds of dishes, even though the war means they can't get the proper ingredients, and have more than one million followers. We also followed Rana, 24, who has given birth to a baby girl prematurely. She has been displaced three times and lives near the hospital with her two sons and her parents. Some of the film also looks at how medics fought to keep people alive in al-Aqsa hospital, which was described in January 2024 by British doctors as the only functioning hospital in central Gaza. That's where we found Zakaria. Everyone working at the hospital knows the boy. He is, of course, still a child and not a qualified medic but he is always hanging around, waiting for an opportunity to help someone, in the hope he might receive some food or money in return. Sometimes he helps carry equipment for local journalists, other times stretchers with people injured or dying. When there is a quiet moment he helps clean the blood and dirt from the ambulances. There is no school for him to go to and he is the only person in his family making any money. He doesn't stay with them as they have little food or water, he says, and instead lives on his own at the hospital and sleeps where he can. One night it's in the CT scan room, another in the journalists' tent or the back of an ambulance. There were plenty of nights he fell asleep hungry. As much as they try, hospital staff can't keep him away from the chaos of caring for casualties. Zakaria idolises the paramedics and wants to be considered part of the team. One of them, Said, takes him under his wing. Whenever he treats Zakaria as a child, he says, the boy gets upset. Other staff see the care and attention Zakaria pays to them and the patients in the hospital and teach him to give someone an IV drip. In recognition of his efforts, they even make him a miniature set of blue scrubs – which he takes great pride in. Said tries to ensure the boy still gets a semblance of childhood and in the film we follow them on a trip to the beach. Sitting under the fronds of a tree branch, Zakaria tucks into the lunch Said has bought. The shawarma, he says, is perfect. Said jokes it's the only time the boy ever "shuts up". But Said worries Zakaria has seen so much death and destruction that he may never fit in with children his age again. Zakaria is himself looking beyond childhood. "I want to be a paramedic," he says. "But first I need to get out of here." As told to George Sandeman Watch - Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is on BBC Two and iPlayer at 21:00 on 17 February (UK-only) Starved, threatened and abused: Parents of freed Hamas hostages give details of ordeal Confusion clouds efforts to save Gaza ceasefire Paul Adams: Why the Gaza ceasefire is under growing strain
