Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Hostage deaths could pile pressure on Netanyahu to agree Gaza ceasefire

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Discovery of six bodies may trigger renewed protests as anger grows over prime minister’s handling of the crisis

Overnight, the rumours spread: the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had found bodies in Gaza. Everyone in Israel knew the corpses were likely to be hostages seized on 7 October. The grim details – how many, their identities, and how and when they died – slowly emerged during the early hours of Sunday, to mounting sorrow and fury across the country.

The bodies of six people kidnapped alive by Hamas – Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt Ori Danino – were found in a Rafah tunnel 20 metres underground, a kilometre away from where another hostage, Qaid Farhan Alkadi, was found in relatively decent health last week. Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American citizen, appeared in a Hamas video in April. It was clear from the footage that his left hand had been amputated.

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Protesters across Israel call for Netanyahu to agree hostage deal – as it happened

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Mass protests follow call for general strike by head of Israeli labour union after six hostages held by Hamas were recovered overnight

The Associated Press has put together a profile of the six hostages whose bodies were discovered by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Here’s a look at their lives:

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Israel confirms deaths of six hostages after IDF finds bodies in Gaza

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IDF says Hamas killed captives shortly before bodies found, as families’ group accuses Netanyahu of ‘abandoning’ abductees

Israel has confirmed the deaths of six more hostages taken in the 7 October attack by Hamas, saying they were killed by their captors shortly before their bodies were found on Saturday in a tunnel complex under Gaza.

“According to our initial estimation, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” a military spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, told reporters in an early-morning briefing.

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‘There was no mercy, even on children’: trauma in the West Bank after Israeli raids

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Israel accused of using a 10-year-old girl as a human shield as it carried out its devastating attack on the occupied Palestinian territory

When Israeli soldiers arrived at the modest house along an alleyway in Nur Shams camp on Wednesday night, they sent the women and four of the children out into the street, but kept hold of Malak Shihab.

They took the muzzle off their dog and it went straight up to the slight 10-year-old girl and sniffed her. Terrified, she pleaded to be with her mother, but the soldiers seemed to have just one phrase in accented Arabic: “Open the doors.”

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Boy, four, who broke bronze age jar returns to museum in Israel

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The family watched the rare 3,500-year-old jar, believed used for wine or oil, being restored at the Hecht Museum

Smashing a rare museum artefact dating back thousands of years would probably earn you a lifetime ban at the very least.

But a four-year-old who accidentally toppled a jar from the bronze age, leaving it broken into pieces, was welcomed back to the Hecht Museum in Haifa, Israel, a week after the unfortunate incident.

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US and Iraq launch joint raid killing 15 Islamic State militants

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Seven American troops injured during battle in Anbar desert, says central command

The US military and Iraq launched a joint raid targeting suspected Islamic State group militants in the Iraqi western desert that killed at least 15 people while seven American troops were hurt, officials said on Saturday.

The US military’s central command said the militants were armed with weapons, grenades and explosive belts during the battle on Thursday, which Iraqi forces said happened in the Anbar desert.

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Aid agency says men killed by Israeli airstrike on convoy were a local escort

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Anera says four men who died were Gazans offering to protect convoy, but IDF describes them as ‘armed assailants’ who hijacked car

An aid agency whose convoy was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday has said that the four men killed were local community members who had asked to serve as an escort for the convoy.

The four men were the only casualties from the strike, which hit the lead vehicle in which they were travelling. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described them as “armed assailants” who had hijacked the convoy.

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Contempt for Palestinian Authority in West Bank after deadly Israeli strikes

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Opinion differs only over whether leadership is merely incompetent or actively working with Netanyahu

Israel said it has killed three militants including a senior Hamas official in an airstrike on a car outside Jenin on the third day of extensive military operations across the West Bank.

The campaign, according to Israeli leaders, is designed to pre-empt attacks on Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv this month, the first for eight years.

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Senior Hamas commander killed by Israeli police in West Bank, IDF says – as it happened

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Wassem Hazem, commander in Jenin, killed in car Israel says container weapons and cash

There is more coming to us on reports from the Israeli military of the death of local Hamas commander in Jenin, Wassem Hazem (see 9.48am post) and two Hamas gunmen.

Hamas has not yet commented on the incident.

In the village of Zababdeh, just outside Jenin, a burnt-out car riddled with bullet holes stood against a wall where the driver crashed the vehicle after being pursued by an Israeli special forces unit, residents said.

Villager Saif Ghannam, 25, said one of the two other men who escaped from the vehicle was killed just outside his house by a small drone strike that shattered the windows, while a second man was killed a short distance away.

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WHO delivers 1.2m polio vaccine doses to Gaza as pauses in fighting agreed

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Three-day humanitarian pauses in several areas planned to allow inoculation of more than 640,000 children

The World Health Organization has said it delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century.

The vaccinations, due to begin this weekend, will be accompanied by three-day pauses in the fighting in several areas of the territory to allow the inoculation of more than 640,000 children.

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Israeli military launches fatal airstrike on humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza

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IDF claims ‘armed assailants’ tried to hijack vehicle leading convoy of medical supplies, but aid organiser says those killed were transport company staff

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said they carried out an airstrike on a humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza aimed at “armed assailants” trying to hijack it but the charity that organised the aid said people killed in the strike were employees of the transport company it was working with.

The convoy, organised by the US-based NGO Anera, was carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah on Thursday evening at the time of the attack. Its route had been coordinated in advance with the IDF, under a deconfliction process intended to prevent aid vehicles being bombed.

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Special relationship at risk if UK bans arms sales to Israel, says Trump adviser

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Robert O’Brien says UK could face US counter-embargos and put its role in F-35 fighter jet project in danger

Labour risks a serious rift in the UK’s special relationship with the US if it goes ahead with a ban on arms sales to Israel, Donald Trump’s last national security adviser has warned.

Robert O’Brien, still one of the key security voices in the Trump circle, said the UK was endangering its future role in the F-35 project as well as facing the risk of US congressional counter-embargos. The F-35 fighter jets are made in part by British arms firms and are used by Israel’s air force as part of its bombing of Gaza.

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WHO says Israel has agreed pauses in Gaza fighting to allow polio vaccinations

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Tentative announcement follows Israeli PM approving designated places to treat estimated 640,000 children

The World Health Organization has announced it has “a preliminary commitment” for humanitarian pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of children against polio, with the first vaccinations to begin as early as this weekend.

The UN is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the UN’s global health body confirmed on 23 August that at least one baby has been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

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Five Palestinian fighters killed in West Bank mosque as Israeli assault continues

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Deaths in Tulkarm bring toll to 16 during Israel’s deadliest operation in West Bank since 7 October Hamas attack

The Israeli military said it had killed five Palestinian fighters inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, in the midst of one of the largest assaults on the occupied territory for months.

The overall toll of 16 Palestinians killed in less than two days would make it the deadliest Israeli operation in the West Bank since the 7 October Hamas attack in Israel which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and ignited the Gaza war.

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Middle East crisis: Israeli troops claim five Palestinian militants killed at mosque in West Bank operation – as it happened

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Thursday’s attack follows major raids across the region which saw at least 10 Palestinians killed as part of an operation the military said could last days

Zainab Barakat woke early on Sunday morning to the sound of bombs. During more than 10 months of fighting between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) near her village of Zebqine, she had grown used to hearing the explosions that have devastated other nearby villages.

So far, Zebqine, almost 7km from the Lebanese-Israeli border, had been spared the worst of the shelling. But this time, she says, “it was right on top of us. It smashed the windows; the whole place shook. The children were panicking.”

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UN food agency suspends operations in Gaza after car hit by gunfire at Israeli checkpoint

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World Food Programme says it is the first time that one of its vehicles has been directly shot at near a checkpoint despite having security clearance

The UN’s food agency has said it is pausing movement of its staff in Gaza “until further notice” after one of its vehicles was struck by gunfire at an Israeli military checkpoint.

Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said of Tuesday’s incident: “This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of WFP’s team in Gaza.

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Houthis to allow access to stricken Red Sea tanker amid fears of huge oil spill

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The Yemen-based militants have denied an Iranian claim that they agreed to a temporary truce but will allow a tugboat to access the Sounion tanker

Yemen’s Houthi group has agreed to allow tugboats and rescue ships to access a damaged crude oil tanker in the Red Sea, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said, after the Iranian-aligned militants attacked the Greek-flagged vessel last week.

The Sounion tanker is carrying 150,000 tonnes, or 1m barrels, of crude oil and poses an environmental hazard, shipping officials said. Any spill has the potential to be among the largest from a ship in recorded history.

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Israeli forces kill at least 10 Palestinians in West Bank raids

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Gun battles reported to be continuing as Israel claims all those killed in overnight raids and airstrikes were militants

Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians in the West Bank in overnight raids and airstrikes they said were intended to contain attacks on Israelis using Iranian-supplied arms.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the West Bank operations, some of the most extensive in recent years, were likely to go on for some days, in what it described as a preventive campaign to forestall attacks on Israelis.

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US imposes sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers in West Bank

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Targeting of government-funded group active in Hebron hills brings punitive measures closer to Israeli cabinet

The US has announced new sanctions against extremist settlers in the West Bank who are funded by the Israeli government, as Washington steps up its attempt to rein in worsening settler violence.

The sanctions target one organisation and one individual with long involvement in the intimidation of Palestinians with the aim of seizing their land. The US Treasury has made them “specially designated nationals”, which means their assets are blocked and US citizens and companies are prohibited from dealing with them.

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