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82 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as desperately needed aid fails to reach Palestinians

82 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as desperately needed aid fails to reach Palestinians
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Mourners attend the the funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip Wednesday. (Reuters)
82 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as desperately needed aid fails to reach Palestinians
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A Palestinian man kisses the body of his nephew Nour Nabhan, 5, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Al-Ahli Arab Baptist hospital, in Gaza City Wednesday. (Reuters)
82 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as desperately needed aid fails to reach Palestinians
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Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Gaza City Wednesday. (Reuters)
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Updated 22 May 2025

82 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as desperately needed aid fails to reach Palestinians

82 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as desperately needed aid fails to reach Palestinians
  • UN agency for Palestinian refugees says Gaza staff still waiting to receive aid
  • Many women and one-week old baby and 14 members of the same family among latest killed as Israel prepares further onslaught

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza: Israeli strikes continued to pound the Gaza Strip Wednesday, despite a surge in international anger at Israel’s widening offensive, killing at least 82 people, including several women and a week-old infant, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and area hospitals.
Israel began allowing dozens of humanitarian trucks into Gaza on Tuesday, but the aid has not yet reached Palestinians in desperate need.
Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian agency, said no trucks were picked up from the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom, the Israeli border crossing with southern Gaza.
UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Tuesday evening that although the aid had entered Gaza, aid workers were not able to bring it to distribution points, after the Israeli military forced them to reload the supplies onto separate trucks and workers ran out of time.
The Israeli defense body that oversees humanitarian aid to Gaza said trucks were entering Gaza on Wednesday morning, but it was unclear if that aid would be able to continue deeper into Gaza for distribution. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said its staff had waited several hours to collect aid from the border crossing in order to begin distribution but were unable to do so on Tuesday.

A few dozen Israeli activists opposed to Israel’s decision to allow aid into Gaza while Hamas still holds Israeli hostages attempted to block the trucks carrying the aid on Wednesday morning, but were kept back by Israeli police.




A Palestinian man kisses the body of his nephew Nour Nabhan, 5, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Al-Ahli Arab Baptist hospital, in Gaza City Wednesday. (Reuters)


Diplomats come under fire in Jenin
A group of diplomats came under fire while visiting Jenin, a city in the Israel-occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Authority. The diplomats were on official mission to observe the humanitarian situation in Jenin when shots rang out.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the shooting.
An aid worker, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said a delegation of about 20 diplomats was being briefed about the situation in Jenin by the Palestinian Authority. The group of regional, European and Western diplomats were standing near the entrance of the Jenin refugee camp when they heard gunshots just before 2 p.m., though it was unclear where the shots came from, she said. No one was injured, she added.
Footage shows a number of diplomats giving media interviews as rapid shots ring out close to the group, forcing them to run for cover.
Jenin has been the site of Israel’s widespread crackdown against West Bank militants since earlier this year.




Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Gaza City Wednesday. (Reuters)


On Jan. 21 — just two days after its ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza — Israeli forces descended on Jenin as they have dozens of times since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The fighting displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians, one of the largest West Bank displacements in years.
International pressure increases against Israel
On Tuesday, the United Kingdom. suspended free trade talks with Israel over its intensifying assault, a step that came a day after the UK, Canada and France promised concrete steps to prompt Israel to halt the war. Separately, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc was reviewing an EU pact governing trade ties with Israel over its conduct of the war in Gaza.
Israel says it is prepared to stop the war once all the hostages taken by Hamas return home and Hamas is defeated, or is exiled and disarmed. Hamas says it is prepared to release the hostages in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from the territory and an end to the war. It rejects demands for exile and disarmament.
Negotiations stalled as Israeli operation widens
Israel called back its senior negotiating team from ceasefire talks in the Qatari capital of Doha on Tuesday, saying it would leave lower-level officials in place instead. Qatari leaders, who are mediating negotiations, said there was a large gap between the two sides that they had been unable to bridge.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes continued across Gaza. In the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israel recently ordered new evacuations pending an expected expanded offensive, 24 people were killed, 14 of them from the same family. A week-old infant was killed in central Gaza.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strikes, but has said it is targeting Hamas infrastructure and accused Hamas militants of operating from civilian areas.

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday urged world leaders to take immediate action to end Israel’s siege on Gaza, issuing the appeal in a written statement during a visit to Beirut, where he is expected to discuss the disarmament of Palestinian factions in Lebanon’s refugee camps.
“I call on world leaders to take urgent and decisive measures to break the siege on our people in the Gaza Strip,” Abbas said, demanding the immediate entry of aid, an end to the Israeli offensive, the release of detainees, and a full withdrawal from Gaza.
“It is time to end the war of extermination against the Palestinian people. I reiterate that we will not leave, and we will remain here on the land of our homeland, Palestine,” Abbas said.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 others. The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.


Netanyahu says Gaza war not over until Hamas disarms

Netanyahu says Gaza war not over until Hamas disarms
Updated 55 min 18 sec ago

Netanyahu says Gaza war not over until Hamas disarms

Netanyahu says Gaza war not over until Hamas disarms
  • “When that is successfully completed... then the war will end,” he told the right-wing Israeli Channel 14
  • Hamas has so far resisted the idea and since the pause in fighting has moved to reassert its control over Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Saturday that the war in Gaza would not be over until Hamas was disarmed and the Palestinian territory demilitarized.
His declaration came as Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, handed over the remains of two further hostages on Saturday night under a US-brokered ceasefire agreement.
Netanyahu’s office said late Saturday that a Red Cross team had received the remains of two hostages from Hamas and handed them to Israeli forces in Gaza, from where they would be taken to Israel to be identified.
The issue of the dead hostages still in Gaza has become a sticking point in the implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire. Israel has linked the reopening of the key Rafah crossing to the territory to the recovery of the hostages’ remains.
Netanyahu cautioned that completing the ceasefire’s second phase was essential to ending the war and involved the disarming of Hamas and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.
“When that is successfully completed — hopefully in an easy way, but if not, in a hard way — then the war will end,” he added in an appearance on right-wing Israeli Channel 14.
Hamas has so far resisted the idea and since the pause in fighting has moved to reassert its control over Gaza.
The US State Department on Saturday said it had “credible reports” that Hamas was planning an imminent attack against civilians in Gaza, warning that would be a “ceasefire violation.”
“Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire,” it said in a statement, without elaborating on the nature or target of such an attack.

Rafah crossing closed

Under the ceasefire deal brokered by US President Donald Trump, Hamas has so far released all 20 living hostages, along with the remains of nine Israelis and one Nepalese.
In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and 135 other bodies of Palestinians since the truce came into effect on October 10.
Hamas has said it needs time and technical assistance to recover the remaining bodies, which it says are buried under Gaza’s rubble.
Netanyahu’s office said he had “directed that the Rafah crossing remain closed until further notice.”
“Its reopening will be considered based on how Hamas fulfils its part in returning the hostages and the bodies of the deceased, and in implementing the agreed-upon framework,” it said, referring to the week-old ceasefire deal.
Hamas warned late Saturday that the closure of the Rafah crossing would cause “significant delays in the retrieval and transfer of remains.”

Digging latrines 

Further delays to the reopening could also complicate the task facing Tom Fletcher, the UN head of humanitarian relief, who was in northern Gaza on Saturday.
“To see the devastation — this is a vast part of the city, just a wasteland — and it’s absolutely devastating to see,” he told AFP.
Fletcher said the task ahead for the UN and aid agencies was a “massive, massive job.”
He said he had met residents returning to destroyed homes who were trying to dig latrines in the ruins.
“We have a massive 60-day plan now to surge in food, get a million meals out there a day, start to rebuild the health sector, bring in tents for the winter, get hundreds of thousands of kids back into school.”

Gaza killings continue 

Some violence has persisted despite the ceasefire.
Gaza’s civil defense agency, which operates under Hamas authority, said on Saturday that it had recovered the bodies of nine Palestinians — two men, three women and four children — from the Shaaban family after Israeli troops fired two tank shells at a bus.
Two more victims were blown apart in the blast and their remains have yet to be recovered, it said.
At Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Hospital, the victims were laid out in white shrouds as their relatives mourned.
“My daughter, her children and her husband; my son, his children and his wife were killed. What did they do wrong?” demanded grandmother Umm Mohammed Shaaban.
The Israeli military said it had fired on a vehicle that approached the so-called “yellow line,” to which its forces withdrew under the terms of the ceasefire, and gave no estimate of casualties.
 


US warns Hamas planning attack on Palestinian civilians in apparent violation of Gaza ceasefire

US warns Hamas planning attack on Palestinian civilians in apparent violation of Gaza ceasefire
Updated 19 October 2025

US warns Hamas planning attack on Palestinian civilians in apparent violation of Gaza ceasefire

US warns Hamas planning attack on Palestinian civilians in apparent violation of Gaza ceasefire

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: The US State Department said Saturday that it has “credible reports” that Hamas could violate the ceasefire with an attack on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
If the attack takes place, it “would constitute a direct and grave violation” of the agreement forged by President Donald Trump to end the two-year war between Israel and Hamas, the statement said.
No further details were disclosed about the potential attack.
”Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire,” the State Department said.
Trump previously warned on social media that “if Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.”

 


Dozens arrested in Tunisia anti-pollution protests: activists

Dozens arrested in Tunisia anti-pollution protests: activists
Updated 18 October 2025

Dozens arrested in Tunisia anti-pollution protests: activists

Dozens arrested in Tunisia anti-pollution protests: activists
  • Thousands have rallied in the southern coastal city in recent days calling for the closure of a phosphate processing plant, which they say is behind a rise in gas poisonings and other pollution-related health problems

TUNIS: Police in Gabes, Tunisia have arrested dozens of people in demonstrations against a chemical factory which locals blame for pollution and a range of health issues, a local campaign group and a lawyer said Saturday.
Thousands have rallied in the southern coastal city in recent days calling for the closure of a phosphate processing plant, which they say is behind a rise in gas poisonings and other pollution-related health problems.
“The arrests targeted night protesters,” said Mehdi Talmoudi, a lawyer and member of the local branch of the Tunisian Bar Association.
“While daytime demonstrations have been largely peaceful, those at night have seen occasional clashes with security forces and burning tires,” he told AFP.
Talmoudi said the exact number of arrests was not known.
But Khayreddine Debaya, coordinator of the local campaign group Stop Pollution, said “over 100 people were taken into custody” by early Saturday.
“Police arrested more than 70 people just last night, and more by dawn,” he said. “Some were taken from their homes.”
Other Tunisian activists on social media have also condemned “a wave of arrests.”
Locals in Gabes have held several rallies urging the closure of the factory, which processes phosphate to make fertilizers.
They say it has recently been releasing more toxic gases and radioactive waste into the sea.
Authorities earlier this year said they would ramp up production at the plant, despite a 2017 promise to gradually shut it down.
Early on Saturday, the Tunisian presidency said President Kais Saied had summoned parliament speaker Brahim Bouderbala and the head of the second parliamentary chamber, Imed Derbali, to discuss “the environmental situation” in Gabes, among other issues.
Saied said “work was underway to find urgent solutions to pollution.”
Saied has vowed to revive the phosphate sector, long hindered by unrest and underinvestment, calling it a “pillar of the national economy.”
Taking advantage of rising world fertilizer prices, Tunisia now wants the plant’s output to increase more than fourfold by 2030, from less than three million tons a year to 14 million tons.
 

 


Hamas says Rafah closure will delay handing over of hostage remains

Hamas says Rafah closure will delay handing over of hostage remains
Updated 18 October 2025

Hamas says Rafah closure will delay handing over of hostage remains

Hamas says Rafah closure will delay handing over of hostage remains
  • Hamas said the continued closure “blocks the entry of specialized equipment needed to search for those missing“

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Hamas said Saturday that the closure of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza would cause significant delays in the handover of hostages’ remains.
In a statement, the group said the continued closure “blocks the entry of specialized equipment needed to search for those missing under the rubble and prevents forensic teams and tools required to identify bodies,” leading to “significant delays in the retrieval and transfer of remains.”


Palestinians, Israel disagree on whether Gaza’s crucial Rafah crossing will reopen Monday

Palestinians, Israel disagree on whether Gaza’s crucial Rafah crossing will reopen Monday
Updated 18 October 2025

Palestinians, Israel disagree on whether Gaza’s crucial Rafah crossing will reopen Monday

Palestinians, Israel disagree on whether Gaza’s crucial Rafah crossing will reopen Monday
  • The Rafah crossing is the only one not controlled by Israel before the war
  • It’s unclear who will operate the crossing’s heavily damaged Gaza side once the war ends

CAIRO: The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will reopen Monday for people returning to Gaza, the Palestinian embassy in Egypt said Saturday, but the territory’s sole gateway to the outside world will remain closed to people trying to leave.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement within minutes, saying that the Rafah crossing wouldn’t reopen “until further notice,” adding that it would depend on how Hamas fulfills its role in returning all the bodies of the dead hostages.
Israel’s foreign ministry on Thursday had said that the crossing would likely reopen Sunday — another step in the fragile ceasefire.
The Rafah crossing is the only one not controlled by Israel before the war. It has been closed since May 2024, when Israel took control of the Gaza side. A fully reopened crossing would make it easier for Gazans to seek medical treatment, travel or visit family in Egypt, home to tens of thousands of Palestinians.
It’s unclear who will operate the crossing’s heavily damaged Gaza side once the war ends.