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US military launches new barrage of missiles against Houthis in Yemen

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

Washington: The US military has fired another wave of missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites, US Central Command said, marking the fourth time in days it has directly targeted the group in Yemen.

The strikes were launched from ships and submarines in the Red Sea and hit 14 missiles that the command deemed an “imminent threat” after a one-way attack drone was launched from a Houthi-controlled area in Yemen and struck a Marshall Islands-flagged, US-owned and operated ship, the Genco Picardy, in the Gulf of Aden, which the Houthis claimed was a “direct hit”.

“Forces conducted strikes on 14 Iran-backed Houthi missiles that were loaded to be fired in Houthi controlled areas in Yemen,” Central Command said in a statement posted on X late on Thursday afternoon (AEDT).

“These missiles on launch rails presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region and could have been fired at any time, prompting US forces to exercise their inherent right and obligation to defend themselves.”

Earlier the US announced it had put the Houthis back on its list of specially designated global terrorists. The sanctions that come with the formal designation are meant to sever violent extremist groups from their sources of financing.

But despite the sanctions and military strikes, including a large-scale operation carried out by US and British warships and warplanes that hit more than 60 targets across Yemen late last week, the Houthis are continuing their harassment campaign of commercial and military ships.

The US has also strongly warned Iran to cease providing weapons to the Houthis. Last week, a US raid on a dhow trading vessel intercepted ballistic missile parts the US said Iran was shipping to Yemen. Two US Navy SEALs remain unaccounted for after one was knocked off the vessel by a wave during the seizure and the second followed him into the water.

On Wednesday, Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said the US would continue to take military action to prevent further attacks.

“They are exploiting this situation to conduct attacks against the ships and vessels from more than 50 countries … around the world. And so we’re going to continue to work with our partners in the region to prevent those attacks or deter those attacks in the future,” Ryder said.

There have been several incidents since the joint operations began. The Houthis fired an anti-ship cruise missile toward a US Navy destroyer over the weekend, but the ship shot it down. The Houthis then struck a US-owned ship in the Gulf of Aden on Monday and a Malta-flagged bulk carrier in the Red Sea on Tuesday. In response on Tuesday, the US struck four anti-ship ballistic missiles that were prepared to launch and presented an imminent threat to merchant and US Navy ships in the region.

Hours later, the Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack on the Malta-flagged bulk carrier Zografia. The ship was hit, but no one was injured and it continued on its way.

Attacks by the Iran-allied Houthi militia on ships in the region since November have slowed trade between Asia and Europe and alarmed major powers in an escalation of the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza.

The Houthis say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians and have threatened to expand attacks to include US ships in response to American and British strikes on the group’s positions.

In Gaza, a shipment of medicine for dozens of hostages held by Palestinian militant group Hamas had entered the territory, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. The Gulf nation and France worked out a deal between Israel and Hamas to deliver medicine to both the hostages and Palestinians.

More than 100 days into the Israel-Hamas war, Palestinian militants are still putting up stiff resistance across the besieged enclave. The conflict shows no sign of ending and has inflamed tensions across the Middle East, with a dizzying array of strikes and counterstrikes in recent days.

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has risen to 24,285 people, the Health Ministry said. In Israel, about 1200 people were killed during Hamas’ October 7 attack that sparked the latest war and saw some 250 people taken hostage by militants.

– AP, Reuters

Israel-Hamas war: Israeli army probe finds series of failures in killings of three hostages in Gaza

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

The Israel Defence Forces has admitted it “failed in its mission” after its soldiers mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza earlier this month. Warning: Graphic

An investigation into the accidental shooting of three Israeli hostages have found one of the men was shot and killed about 15 minutes after the other two.

The IDF has published its final findings of an investigation into the December 15 killing of three Israeli hostages by its troops during fighting in a battle-torn neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The army identified the three killed hostages as Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer El-Talalqa.

It found during those 15 minutes, an Israeli officer pleaded with Mr Haim to exit a building, to which he fled following the shooting of Mr Shamriz and Mr El-Talalka.

When Mr Haim left the building, he was shot by two soldiers despite the fact that the officer had ordered them not to fire. Mr Haim died shortly after.

The investigation also found that IDF forces on the ground did not have “sufficient awareness” of the possibility that troops would encounter captives in a situation that was not a special operation to rescue them, despite the army having intelligence of possible hostages in the area

In a statement, the IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi said the shooting “did not match the risk and the situation”.

“The (military) failed in the mission of rescuing the abductees in this incident,” he said.

“The entire chain of command feels responsible for the difficult event, grieves over this outcome and shares in the grief of the three families of the abductees.”

The findings of the investigation into the tragic incident were presented to the families of the three hostages.

It comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with the families of 28 of the captives in the Kirya in Tel Aviv, where the he said “we are working to return everyone. That is our goal”.

Hamas has said it would not release more captives without a full ceasefire, something Israel has repeatedly rejected.

Mr Netanyahu has faced growing domestic pressure to assure the safe return of the captives, no matter what it takes.

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ISRAELI MILITARY ‘REGRETS HARM TO CIVILIANS’ AFTER DOZENS KILLED

The Israeli military has said it “regrets the harm” caused by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike that killed dozens of people in the Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza earlier this week.

About 86 people were killed in the Israeli airstrike in the Maghazi camp, east of Deir al-Balah, late on Sunday, according to figures by the UN human rights office.

An Israeli military official, speaking to Israel’s Kan news, said: “The type of munition did not match the nature of the attack, causing extensive collateral damage that could have been avoided.”

CHILDREN BEING KILLED IN WEST BANK AT ‘UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS’

The number of children who have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has reached an “unprecedented” level, the UN children’s fund (Unicef) has warned.

At least 83 children have been killed in the West Bank in the past 12 weeks, Unicef’s regional director for the Middle East and north Africa Adele Khodr said in a statement on Thursday.

That figure is more than double the number of children killed in all of 2022.

“This year has been the deadliest year on record for children in the West Bank,” she said. In addition, she said that more than 576 children have been injured and others have reportedly been detained since October 7.

“As the world watches on in horror at the situation in the Gaza Strip, children in the West Bank are experiencing a nightmare of their own,” Ms Khodr said.

“Living with a near-constant feeling of fear and grief is, sadly, all-too-common for children affected.”

RESIDENTIAL BUILDING ‘COMPLETELY FLATTENED’

At least 20 people have been killed and 55 wounded by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip overnight.

The incident occurred near the Kuwaiti hospital, Al Jazeera reported, citing its correspondent who said he witnessed “a Palestinian girl who was injured, seriously injured, and another woman whose face was fully covered with blood” as casualties entered the hospital.

“The airstrike has completely flattened the residential building that is full displaced people,” the correspondent said.

Until now rescue operations by the ambulances and civil defence teams continue to pull the people from under the rubble.

AMERICAN THOUGHT TO BE HELD CAPTIVE BY HAMAS KILLED

US president Joe Biden says that Judith Weinstein, 70, was actually killed during Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, and was never taken captive.

Mr Biden said he is “devastated” to learn of the death of the US-Israeli-Canadian woman after she was “fatally wounded” during the attacks alongside her Israeli-American husband, Gadi Haggai, 73.

“We are holding Judith and Gad’s four children, seven grandchildren, and other loved ones close to our hearts,” Mr Biden said.

ISRAEL’S WAR CABINET IS EXPECTED TO MEET TO DISCUSS POST WAR

Israel’s war cabinet is expected to meet on Friday to discuss its plan for Gaza after the war with Hamas ends, according to reports.

The meeting comes following reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been putting off the discussion of plans for control of the Palestinian territory.

Mr Netanyahu has reportedly refused multiple requests from security officials to arrange a meeting on decisions relating to “the day after” Israel declares it has achieved its goals against Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip.

MIA SCHEM OPENS UP ABOUT CAPTIVITY

The 21-year-old face of Israel’s hostage crisis spoke for the first time on her 54 days in captivity, following her release at the end of last month.

French-Israeli tattoo artist Mia Schem, who appeared in the first proof of live video after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, said she “went through a holocaust” in Gaza.

“It was important for me to reflect on the true situation regarding the people living in Gaza, who they really are, and what I went through there,” she said in a preview of the full interview being aired on Israel’s Channel 13.

“Entire families are in the service of Hamas. In retrospect, I suddenly realised that I was being held in captivity by a family.

“I began asking myself questions, why am I being held in a family’s house? Why are there children here? Why is there a woman here?”

Ms Schem was abducted from the music festival in Kibbutz Re’im and was shown in a video soon after receiving treatment from a veterinarian for an injured arm.

She caused headlines after she said in videos that her captors were “very kind” before she was released during a temporary ceasefire. She has remained silent until now, revealing only a new tattoo on Instagram saying: “We will dance again”.

“I will never forget October 7, 2023,” she wrote in the post.

“The pain and the fear, the difficult sights, the friends who won’t come back, and those we must bring back. But we will win, we will dance!”

Meanwhile, Israeli captive Ruti Munder, 78, told Channel 13 upon release that conditions were reasonable at the start of the conflict.

Initially, they ate “chicken with rice, all sorts of canned food and cheese,” she said. “We were ok.:

But the menu changed when “the economic situation was not good, and people were hungry”.

ISRAEL APPROVES AID BY SEA

Israel has given preliminary approval to Cyprus for a maritime humanitarian corridor to ship aid to the besieged and war-torn Gaza Strip, the foreign ministry said.

The proposal, in the works for more than a month, aims to deliver large quantities of badly needed aid to Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel has waged a nearly three-month war against the Islamist militant group Hamas which rules the territory.

Gaza’s 2.4 million people are suffering chronic shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine, with only limited aid entering the Palestinian coastal territory.

Last week the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for “safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale”.

FRANCE PRESSURES ISRAEL ON CEASEFIRE

Israel has come under pressure from one of its strongest allies with a French demand for a “lasting ceasefire” in the war with Hamas.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the escalating crisis that has killed more than 20,000 people in Gaza.

The talks came as Israeli forces pressed on with intensified attacks in the Gaza Strip’s biggest southern city and central areas.

KHAN YUNIS LIT UP

Explosions lit up the sky over the southern city of Khan Yunis – a focus of heavy urban combat since the Israeli army said it had largely gained control over Gaza’s north.

The Gaza health ministry said a strike took out a house near Al-Amal hospital, killing 22 people. Heavy firefights also raged again around Gaza City in the north.

During the talks, Mr Macron, an ally of Mr Netanyahu since the start of the war triggered by the horrific Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, conveyed his “deepest concern” about civilian deaths and the humanitarian emergency in Gaza.

He also insisted on the importance of measures to end violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank and prevent new planned settlements.

“France will work in the coming days in co-operation with Jordan to carry out humanitarian operations in Gaza,” the French presidency said in a statement.

Mr Netanyahu’s office said during the call the prime minister thanked Mr Macron for “France’s involvement in defending freedom of navigation and its willingness to help restore security along Israel’s border with Lebanon”.

VIDEO APPEARS TO SHOW MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN DETAINED BY IDF

Footage circulating on social media has captured harrowing scenes showing Palestinian men, women and at least two children detained and stripped by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in a stadium in northern Gaza.

A CNN geolocation of the video shows it was filmed in Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City. Hundreds of Palestinian men and boys have been detained by Israeli forces in recent weeks.

Clips in the video show what appear to be two young boys in one frame, stripped down to their underwear, walking and holding both their hands up as the IDF directs them in the stadium.

In another clip, what appears to be the same two young boys stripped of their clothing are seen with their hands above their heads as they are lined up in single file lines with other males who appear to be teens and adults.

In some clips they are sitting on the floor with their hands tied to their backs, some blindfolded, and standing in single file lines as the IDF overlooks and inspects them.

Clips of the video also show women and other children detained. In one shot, three fully clothed women are seen blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs as they sit on the grass in front of a soccer goal in the stadium.

An Israeli flag is seen hanging on the soccer goal. Stripped and blindfolded Palestinian men, with their hands tied behind their backs, are seen sitting next to the women. Military vehicles and bulldozers are throughout the stadium in the video.

MACRON FOR ‘DURABLE CEASEFIRE’ IN CALL WITH NETANYAHU

In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his “deepest concern” at the “very heavy civilian toll and the absolute humanitarian emergency facing the civilian population of Gaza.“

The French president said Israel needs to work towards a “durable ceasefire” in Gaza and that needs to be done “with the help of all regional and international partners”.

Mr Macron was among one of the first Western leaders to support a full ceasefire in Gaza. That has continued as Israel’s most significant ally – the US – has refused to do so.

Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected calls to halt the fighting, saying instead operations would intensify with the goal of eliminating Hamas. France will also work with Jordan in days ahead on humanitarian operations in Gaza, the presidency said.

YOUNG ISRAELI MAN JAILED FOR REFUSING MANDATORY SERVICE

A young Israeli man has been jailed for refusing to join the army.

Tal Mitnick, 18, has been sentenced to 30 days in military prison for refusing to enlist in the army in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The teenager becomes the first conscientious objector imprisoned in this war and he could serve even more prison time if he continues to refuse to enlist.

“Violence cannot solve the situation, neither by Hamas nor by Israel. There is no military solution to a political problem,” he wrote in a statement explaining his decision.

SCALE OF GAZA ATTACKS IMPEDING AID DELIVERIES

The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) has warned that the scale and intensity of ground operations and fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza is hindering the delivery of aid to those in need.

“Operational challenges due to insecurity, blocked roads and a scarcity of fuel are also hampering the humanitarian response,” the agency said.

UN officials have repeatedly called for a ceasefire, or at the very least, a pause in fighting to allow a scale up in aid. Those appeals have been rejected by Israel.

Israeli bombardments continue, almost all 2.3m Gazans forced from homes

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

Cairo/Gaza/Jerusalem: Israeli forces pounded central Gaza by land, sea and air and Palestinian authorities reported dozens more deaths, while the UN health agency said thousands of people were trying to flee the fighting.

Israel remains resolved to wipe out Hamas in response to the militant group’s October 7 attack, despite international calls for a ceasefire and the easing of a worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli planes carried out three strikes in Al Nuseirat in central Gaza, killing seven people and wounding several others, medics said on Thursday (AEST).

The UN World Health Organisation said its staff had seen tens of thousands of people fleeing heavy strikes in Khan Younis and the Middle Area on foot, on donkeys or in cars. Makeshift shelters were being built along the road, it said.

On the diplomatic front, where international pressure on Israel has grown, French President Emmanuel Macron told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a call of the need to work towards a durable ceasefire with the help of regional and international partners, Macron’s office said.

A Gaza health ministry statement said an Israeli airstrike killed 20 Palestinians near Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

In central Gaza’s Al-Maghazi district, five Palestinians were killed in one airstrike, medics said, while to the north in Gaza City, health officials said the bodies of seven Palestinians arrived at Al Shifa Hospital.

Residents in the central Gaza Strip said with nightfall, Israeli tank shelling intensified east of Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi where tanks have been trying to force their way through.

Israel’s military reported three more soldiers killed in action in Gaza, bringing total military losses to 166 since ground operations began on October 20.

The war erupted after Hamas killed 1200 people and captured 240 hostages in a cross-border rampage on October 7, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. The Netanyahu government’s response has laid much of Hamas-ruled Gaza to waste.

The Gaza health ministry said the recorded toll in the enclave was 21,110 killed and 55,243 wounded in Israeli attacks.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes.

Many Western and Middle Eastern governments have expressed concerns about the conflict broadening, including on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. On Wednesday, Hezbollah fired more rockets and weaponised drones than it has in any previous day, security sources said.

The Israeli military said its warplanes had targeted Hezbollah military sites and other places in Lebanon, and Israeli cabinet minister Benny Gantz said the situation must change.

“If the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the IDF will do it,” he told a press conference, referring to the Israel Defence Forces.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden said that American military strikes in Iraq on Monday aimed to deter Iran and Iran-backed militia groups from attacks on American personnel and bases. A drone attack by Iran-aligned militants earlier on Monday had wounded three Americans.

Reuters

Canberra backs US warning to Houthis of ‘consequences’

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

04 January 2024, The Australian, by Stephen Lunn

Tensions in the Middle East have further escalated after Australia joined the US and 11 other countries to warn the Houthis of “consequences” if they continued to attack commercial ships in the Red Sea and Iran blamed the US and Israel for two bomb blasts in the country’s south that left at least 95 people dead.

The almost three month-long war between Israel and Hamas, until now fought in Gaza, looks to have led to a strike in Lebanon on Tuesday killing Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri.

Two explosions on Wednesday tore through a crowd in the Iranian city of Kerman commemorating Revolutionary Guards general Qasem Soleimani, killed four years ago in a US drone strike in Baghdad.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called the blasts “heinous”, and his political deputy, Mohammad Jamshidi, blamed the US and Israel.

“Make no mistake, the responsibility for this crime lies with the US and Zionist regimes, and terrorism is just a tool,” Mr Jamshidi posted on X, formerly Twitter.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US “was not involved in any way (and) we have no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion”.

Israel declined to comment.

In the Red Sea the Houthis – from Yemen but backed by Iran – have stepped up their attacks on Israeli-bound ships, the most recent on Wednesday. Their aim, they say, is to support Palestinians in Gaza.

The joint statement issued by the US, Australia and allies, and also signed by the UK and New Zealand, noted the “significant escalation over the past week targeting commercial vessels, with missiles, small boats, and attempted hijackings”.

“We call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews,” the statement, released by the Prime Minister’s office on Thursday, read.

“The Houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways.”

The statement noted almost 15 per cent of global seaborne trade passes through the Red Sea, including 8 per cent of global grain trade, 12 per cent of seaborne-traded oil and 8 per cent of the world’s liquefied natural gas trade.

“These attacks threaten innocent lives from all over the world and constitute a significant international problem that demands collective action,” it said.

The increased regional instability has hit global markets, with oil prices spiking by more than 3 per cent.

NSW senator Dave Sharma, a former ambassador to Israel, said the recent events had “increased the risk of this taking a regional dimension beyond Israel and Hamas in Gaza”.

“Israel hasn’t officially claimed responsibility, but the attack in Beirut is evidence of that,” Senator Sharma said.

“So too is Iran sending a warship to the Red Sea in recent days, along with the Houthis stepping up their attacks, including boarding container ships.

“But I think the bombing in Iran looks more like the signature of a homegrown terrorist operation. It’s easier for Iran to claim the bombing was the work of a foreign actor than admit domestic unrest.”

Senator Sharma said a factor mitigating the risk of a spreading conflict is that Israel has limited its attacks to Hamas targets, leaving Hezbollah alone.

“But even if this is the case, these things can sometimes take on a life of their own,” he said.

Strategic Analysis Australia director Peter Jennings said Australia’s involvement in the joint statement warning the Houthis of consequences arising from any further attacks in the Red Sea was “pathetic” given it was “barely involved” after deciding not to send a ship to the region despite a US request.

“We aren’t in the consequences business. We are in the noise making business,“ Mr Jennings said.

He said the recent events increased the risk of broader conflict beyond Gaza as that theatre winds down, “but not to the point we will see an all-out war”, and agreed the Kerman bombings were unlikely to have been the work of Israel.

“The two bombs were detonated in a sequence, the first one to push a large crowd to run toward the second. This is a classic terrorist ploy,” he said. “Without knowing precisely, it’s more likely to have been Islamic extremists operating within Iran.”

The UN and European Union, along with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Germany and Iraq, denounced the bombings in Iran.

Ruined landscape of Gaza after the bombing

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

04 January 2024, The Australian, by Jareed Malsin and Saeed Shah

The war in the Gaza Strip is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.

By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on the strip. Nearly 70 per cent of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

The bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theatres and schools. Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair.

Most of the strip’s 36 hospitals are shut down, and only eight are accepting patients. Citrus trees, olive groves and greenhouses have been obliterated. More than two-thirds of its schools are damaged.

Israel says that the bombing campaign and ground offensive has inflicted thousands of casualties on its intended target, Hamas. That US designated terrorist group’s cross-border assault on October 7 killed 1200 Israelis, most of them civilians, according to Israeli officials. The attackers tortured residents and burned homes as they went.

In Israel’s response, its bombs, artillery shells and soldiers have killed more than 21,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza. The figure doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants. Most of them are women and children, those officials said.

The destruction resembles that left by Allied bombing of German cities during World War II.

“The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden and other famous cities that have been bombed,” said Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the author of a history of aerial bombing.

“What you’re seeing in Gaza is in the top 25 per cent of the most intense punishment campaigns in history.”

Three months ago, Gaza was a vibrant place. Despite decades of Israeli occupation, sieges and wars, many Palestinians enjoyed living there beside the Mediterranean Sea, where they gathered in cafes and seaside restaurants. Families played on the beach. Young men crowded around TVs in the evening to watch soccer.

Today, Gaza is a landscape of crumpled concrete. In northern Gaza, the focus of Israel’s initial offensive, the few people who remain navigate rubble-strewn streets past bombed-out shops and apartment blocks. Broken glass crunches underfoot. Israeli drones buzz overhead.

In the south, where more than a million displaced residents have fled, Gazans sleep in the street and burn garbage to cook. Some 85 per cent of the strip’s 2.2 million people have fled their homes and are confined by Israeli evacuation orders to less than one-third of the strip, according to the United Nations.

The Israeli military said it is targeting Hamas and taking steps to avoid killing civilians, including by encouraging residents to leave areas it is attacking. The Israeli air force has said its bombing campaign is causing “maximum damage”. Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in October that “while balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage”.

Israel has accused Hamas of using civilian buildings to hide entrances to tunnels in which it stores weapons and hides commanders.

“When you ask why civilian infrastructure is being damaged in Gaza, look at where Hamas built its military infrastructure, then point your finger at Hamas,” Eylon Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office, said on December 17 on X, formerly Twitter. The US recently pressed Israel to try to limit the number of civilian casualties.

With the war zone mostly closed to the outside world, experts are surveying damage by analysing satellite imagery and using remote sensing, which monitors physical characteristics by measuring reflected and emitted radiation at a distance. Their findings, they said, are initial and will need verification on the ground, but are likely an underestimate.

According to analysis of satellite data by remote-sensing experts at the City University of New York and Oregon State University, as many as 80 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza, where the bombing has been most severe, are damaged or destroyed, a higher percentage than in Dresden.

He Yin, an assistant professor of geography at Kent State University in Ohio, estimated that 20 per cent of Gaza’s agricultural land has been damaged or destroyed. Winter wheat that should be sprouting around now isn’t visible, he said, suggesting it wasn’t planted.

A World Bank analysis concluded that by December 12, the war had damaged or destroyed 77 per cent of health facilities, 72 per cent of municipal services such as parks, courts and libraries, 68 per cent of telecommunications infrastructure, and 76 per cent of commercial sites, including the almost complete destruction of the industrial zone in the north.

More than half of all roads, the World Bank found, have been damaged or destroyed. Some 342 schools have been damaged, according to the UN, including 70 of its own schools.

An assessment by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that Israel dropped 29,000 weapons on Gaza in a little over two months, according to US officials. By comparison, the US military dropped 3678 munitions on Iraq from 2004 to 2010, according to the US Central Command.

Among the weapons provided by the US to Israel during the Gaza war are 2000-pound (907kg) “bunker buster” bombs designed to penetrate concrete shelters, which military analysts said are usually used to hit military targets in more sparsely populated areas.

Gaza has a rich 4000-year history. It was a Canaanite and Pharaonic port city that served as a waypoint on trade routes between Africa and Asia. Through history, it built back from wars, sieges, plagues and earthquakes. In 332BC, it was the last city to resist Alexander the Great’s march to Egypt – an act of defiance that fuelled a mythology of a people who would never bow. The municipality of Gaza’s symbol is a phoenix.

The majority of Gaza’s residents are either refugees themselves or descendants of those who fled land that is now the state of Israel.

Israel seized the Gaza Strip from Egypt in 1967. In 2005, a year after another Israeli military operation against Hamas in Gaza, it withdrew its remaining soldiers and settlements, although it maintained control over the enclave’s borders, coastline and airspace.

Israel and Egypt severely restricted movement in and out of Gaza in 2007 after Hamas took control of it, ending decades in which many Gazans worked inside Israel and learned Hebrew.

The current war hasn’t spared treasured historic sites. The Great Omari Mosque, an ancient building that was converted from a fifth-century church to a Muslim place of worship, has been destroyed, its minaret toppled. An Israeli air strike in October hit the fifth century Church of Saint Porphyrius, killing at least 16 Palestinians sheltering there.

“The loss of the Omari mosque saddens me more than the destruction of my own house,” said Fadel Alatel, an archaeologist from Gaza who fled his home to shelter in the southern end of the strip.

The exclusive Rimal neighbourhood, with its broad boulevards and beauty salons, was reduced to rubble in the opening days of the war. Israeli attacks have destroyed Gaza’s main courthouse, parliament building and central archives.

Israel says many of its air strikes have targeted Hamas’s network of tunnels underneath Gaza, which they say also hid hostages taken on October 7. Those tunnels lie beneath densely populated areas in ground that contains important municipal infrastructure, making for a challenging battlefield.

“It’s not a liveable city any more,” said Eyal Weizman, an Israeli-British architect who studies Israel’s approach to the built environment in the Palestinian territories.

Any reconstruction, he said, will require “a whole system of underground infrastructure, because when you attack the subsoil, everything that runs through the ground – the water, the gas, the sewage – is torn”.

Europe’s cities were rebuilt after two world wars. Beirut rose again after civil war and Israeli bombardment. Iraq’s Mosul and Syria’s Raqqa have limped back to life after US-led air campaigns levelled them during the war against Islamic State, though reconstruction has been slow for both.

Gaza faces unique challenges. No one knows who will take control if Israel achieves its aim of destroying Hamas. Israel has said it opposes a US plan to place the Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the occupied West Bank, in charge of the strip.

The enclave’s unusual status as a territory with borders controlled by Israel further complicates any road to recovery. After other recent wars in Gaza, Israel has sometimes blocked the entry of construction materials, arguing Hamas could use them for military purposes.

In 2015, a full year after a 2014 ceasefire, only one house had been rebuilt – not because of a lack of funds, but because cement wasn’t allowed in.

An analysis by the Shelter Cluster, a coalition of aid groups led by the Norwegian Refugee Council, concluded that after the current war, it will take at least a year just to clear the rubble, a task complicated by having to safely remove unexploded ordnance.

Rebuilding the housing will take seven to 10 years, if financing is available, the group said. It will cost some $US3.5 billion ($5.2bn), it estimates, not including the cost of providing temporary accommodation.

The level of damage in Gaza is almost double what it was during a 2014 conflict, which lasted 50 days, with five times as many completely destroyed buildings, according to the Shelter Cluster. In the current conflict, as of mid-December, more than 800,000 people had no home left to return to, the World Bank found.

“In a best-case scenario, it’s going to take decades,” said Caroline Sandes, an expert in postconflict redevelopment at Kingston University London.

Alaa Hasham, a 33-year-old mother living in Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighbourhood, used to enjoy sitting in her apartment’s rooftop garden, taking her children to a seaside resort on the weekends and playing chess with friends.

She fled with her family soon after the bombing began, joining the small minority of Palestinians who were able to leave for Egypt.

Though her home is destroyed, she is clinging to hope that someday she will return to Gaza.

“People think I’m crazy for wanting to go back,” she said. “Gaza is a special place.”

Abeer Ayyoub, Anas Baba, Joanna Sugden and Suha Ma’ayeh contributed to this article

The Wall Street Journal

Israel-Hamas war: ISIS claims Iran attack, as US strikes in Iraq

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

05 January 2024, Herald Sun, by Tiffany Bakker, Adella Beaini and Justin Vallejo

The Islamic State has returned to claim responsibility for the twin explosions in Iran as conflict erupts through the Middle East, with the US bombing an Iranian-backed commander in Baghdad.

The terrorist organisation ISIS claimed responsibility for the twin bombings that killed about 84 and injured 300 more in Iran.

In a statement, the Islamic State said the suicide bombings were carried out by two operatives Umar al-Muwahid and Sayf Allah al-Mujahid. The death toll was revised down from about 100.

A senior Biden administration official said earlier the explosions looked like the work of ISIS, which has been severely degraded but maintains terror cells in Iraq and Iran.

“It does look like a terrorist attack, the kind of thing ISIS has done in the past, and that’s our ongoing assumption at the moment,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters.

It comes as the US killed the military commander of the Iranian-backed Hashed al-Shaabi ex-paramilitary faction, according to the Iraqi government.

“A drone targeted the logistical support headquarters of Hashed al-Shaabi,” mainly pro-Iranian former paramilitary units integrated into the Iraqi armed forces, said an Iraqi security official.

The strike killed “two members and wounded seven others”, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Harakat al-Nujaba, one of the Hashed’s factions, said in a statement that “the deputy commander of operations for Baghdad, Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi”, had been “martyred in a US strike”.

A US official neither confirmed nor denied that Washington was behind the strike.

“The United States is continuing to take action to protect our forces in Iraq and Syria by addressing the threats they face,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

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ISRAELI STRIKE KILLS CHILDREN IN ‘SAFE ZONE’

An Israeli strike had destroyed a home in Mawasi in southern Gaza, an area that the Israeli military had declared a safe zone.

At least 12 people were killed, almost all of them children, according to Palestinian hospital officials.

The blast killed a man and his wife, seven of their children and three other children ranging in age from five to 14, according to a list of the dead who were taken to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.

There was no immediate response from Israel’s military.

PALESTINIANS TO BE ‘IN CHARGE’ OF GAZA AFTER WAR ENDS

Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant has said that there will be no Israeli civilian presence in Gaza and Palestinian bodies will be “in charge” of the territory after the war ends.

In a statement by his office, reported by Reuters, Gallant said Hamas would no longer control Gaza and Israel would reserve its operational freedom of action.

“Gaza residents are Palestinian, therefore Palestinian bodies will be in charge, with the condition that there will be no hostile actions or threats against the State of Israel,” he said.

ISRAEL HITS BACK AT CRITIQUE

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir hit back at ally the United States over its criticism of his push for the transfer of Gazans out of the Palestinian territory.

“The United States is our best friend, but first of all we will do what is best for the State of Israel: the migration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow the (Israeli) residents of the envelope to return home and live in security and will protect the IDF (Israeli) soldiers,” the extreme-right minister posted on X.

His post comes after the US State Department criticised his call for a population transfer as “inflammatory and irresponsible”.

Washington has called out both Mr Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who have called for Israeli settlers to return to Gaza and for the territory’s Palestinian inhabitants to leave.

“Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land,” the State Department said.

Expelling civilians during a conflict or creating unlivable conditions which force them to leave is a war crime.

The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been forced out of their homes by nearly three months of fighting between Hamas militants and Israel.

HAMAS REVENGE AFTER BEIRUT KILLING

The deputy leader of Hamas Saleh al-Aruri was among six people killed in an Israeli drone strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday.

Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, had headed the group’s presence in the West Bank and was an Israeli target long before the Hamas attack on October 7 that killed 1,200 Israeli’s.

Israel has previously announced the killing in Gaza of Hamas commanders and officials during the war, but Aruri is the most high-profile figure to be killed, and his death came in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities began.

Hamas said the killing will not lead to its defeat, while Hezbollah vowed Aruri’s death will not go “unpunished”.

Hezbollah called it “a serious assault on Lebanon … and a dangerous development in the course of the war.”

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the killing and said it “aims to draw Lebanon” further into the Israel-Hamas war.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari did not directly comment on Aruri’s killing but said the military is “highly prepared for any scenario” in its aftermath.

The strike came during more than two months of heavy exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and members of Hezbollah along Lebanon’s southern border.

Since the fighting began on October 8, the fighting has been concentrated a few kilometres from the border but on several occasions Israel’s air force hit Hezbollah targets deeper in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has issued a statement rejecting “inflammatory and irresponsible statements from Israeli Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.”

Matthew Miller said “there should be no mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza” in the statement issued on Tuesday.

“We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel,” Mr Miller said.

“That is the future we seek, in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, the surrounding region, and the world,” Miller added.

On Saturday, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israelis would “make the desert bloom” if only 100,000 Palestinians lived in Gaza. The current population of Gaza is 2.3 million.

MORE MISSILES FIRED AT SHIPS IN RED SEA

Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels fired two missiles late on Tuesday local time toward merchant ships travelling in the Red Sea near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the US military said following a report by the British maritime security agency UKMTO.

United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations had initially reported explosions near a cargo ship sailing between the coasts of Eritrea and Yemen.

“Master reports no damage to the vessel and crew are reported safe at present,” the agency, run by Britain’s Royal Navy, said in a brief message.

The US Central Command later said Huthi rebels had fired two anti-ship ballistic missiles into the southern Red Sea, where there were multiple commercial ships but “none have reported any damage”.

“These illegal actions endangered the lives of dozens of innocent mariners and continue to disrupt the free flow of international commerce,” CENTCOM said on X, formerly Twitter, adding it was the 24th attack against merchant shipping in the area since November 19.

The UN Security Council is set to hold a meeting Wednesday on maintaining international peace and security, which French diplomats said would address the issue of Huthi attacks in the Red Sea.

In recent weeks, Huthi rebels have launched a flurry of drone and missile strikes targeting commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

They say their strikes are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel is battling Hamas militants.

FRENCH PRESIDENT CALLS ON ISRAEL TO AVOID ESCALATION

French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Israel to avoid escalation, “particularly in Lebanon”, after an Israeli strike in Beirut.

Israel has so far not admitted or denied responsibility for the attack. Government adviser Mark Regev has told MSNBC that “whoever did this … [it was] a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership”.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) is reporting that Mr Macron spoke by telephone with Israeli minister and war cabinet member Benny Gantz. “It was essential to avoid any escalatory attitude, particularly in Lebanon, and that France would continue to pass on these messages to all players directly or indirectly involved in the area,” he said.

‘WORLD SHOULD BE ASHAMED’: UN AT SCENE OF HOSPITAL BOMBING

The Gaza team leader of the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) Gemma Connell was at al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, after an Israeli air strike that killed at least five people there.

“Five people were killed here, including a five-day-old child,” Ms Connell said. “It’s a Palestinian Red Crescent Society facility clearly marked with the Red Crescent emblem on the roof.”

“No child in the world should be killed, let alone one sheltering under the emblem of a humanitarian organisation”.

“This was a space where babies were living. This is a space where children were living,” Connell said, “but there is no safe space in Gaza, and the world should be ashamed”.

ANOTHER HAMAS COMMANDER KILLED

Meanwhile, Israeli troops have killed a Hamas commander who helped lead the October 7 terror attack that killed some 1,200 people and saw about 240 others taken hostage.

Adil Mismah, the Nukhba Company Commander of the city of Deir al-Balah, was “eliminated,” Israeli Defense Forces said via social media.

Mismah had led terrorists into the Kibbutz Kissufim and ordered other gunmen to ravage the communities of Nirim and Be’eri, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The commander was slain in an air strike directed by Israeli ground troops, officials said.

The IDF said troops also “struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror targets” in Shejaiya and located a large cache of weapons as well as destroying a launch post and “eliminating” a terror cell that had attacked Israeli troops, the New York Post reported.

A Khan Yunis rocket launcher was also taken down by the IDF, as the Israeli Navy took aim at Gaza targets, officials said.

Israel has said its war in the disputed territory will last for months to come, resisting international calls for a prolonged ceasefire.

More than 21,800 people in Gaza have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

The ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and military casualties, says two-thirds of the victims are women and children.

Israel has claimed that more than 8,000 of the slain Palestinians are terrorists. Neither side has provided evidence to back up their death toll claims.

The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced as the humanitarian crisis dragged on, with more than a half million people starving due to a lack of food being delivered to the region, according to the United Nations.

GAZA FIGHTING RAGES ON

Meanwhile, Israeli forces battled Hamas militants amid the ruins of the heavily-bombed Gaza Strip as the war raging for almost three months piled new miseries on Palestinians in the besieged territory.

The Israeli army said soldiers had killed “dozens of terrorists”, including some carrying explosives, raided a weapons storage compound in the southern city of Khan Yunis and discovered long-range rocket launchers and tunnels.

Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry said 70 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the past 24 hours during Israeli raids.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israel had struck its headquarters in Khan Yunis, “resulting in several fatalities”, and the health ministry said four people were killed including an infant.

UN agencies have voiced alarm over Gaza’s spiralling humanitarian crisis as 2.4 million people live under siege and bombardment, most of them displaced and many huddling in shelters and tents amid dire food shortages.

“Living conditions … are just hopeless,” said Mostafa Shennar who fled Gaza City, now a largely devastated urban combat zone, and has been living in the crowded southern border town of Rafah.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and warned the war may continue “throughout 2024” as efforts toward a ceasefire have so far yielded no results.

Israel, after suffering the worst attack in its history, has launched a withering offensive that has killed at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

ARMY PROBES PRISONER DEATH

The Israeli army says 173 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza in the battle against Hamas, which is black-listed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States.

The military said on Tuesday local time that it was investigating a soldier suspected of shooting dead a Palestinian captured in the Gaza Strip.

“The terrorist was handed over to the supervision of a soldier, who, under suspicion, allegedly shot him, resulting in his death,” the army said of the incident.

Throughout its bloodiest ever Gaza war, Israel has had the backing of its key ally the United States, which has however also urged greater restraint to spare civilian lives.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which includes far-right and hard line nationalist groups, has said repeatedly it will keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed.

The army said Monday it would soon rotate out some of the more than 300,000 reservists called up after October 7, in part to prepare them for many more months of war ahead.

It said reservists from two brigades, which have some 4,000 troops each, will start returning home this week.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant also said some residents “will soon be able to return home” to towns and villages near Gaza that were attacked by Hamas and then evacuated.

The government has so far refused to specify its plans for post-war Gaza and how it will be rebuilt and governed.

US news outlet Axios, citing unnamed Israeli sources, said Hamas had presented Israel with a proposal for a new hostage exchange deal via Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

The official told Axios the proposal had been deemed unacceptable by the Israeli war cabinet, but suggested progress could be made towards a more amenable plan in future.

– with AFP

Why are anti-Semitic screeds, ethnic hatreds being tolerated in Australia?

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

05 January 2024, The Australian, by Francis Galbally

Last week, at a mosque in Sydney’s southwest, imam Sheik Youssef Nabha appeared to encourage people of Lebanese descent to stay in Lebanon, implying it was all right to be allied with Hezbollah, while stirring animosity against Israel and promoting anti-Semitism.

On Tuesday, The Australian reported that another Sydney-based cleric, Abu Ousayd, known for his anti-Semitic rants, delivered another anti-Semitic tirade on New Year’s Eve, saying “Jews were descendants of pigs and monkeys”.

These events among our Muslim community should give cause for serious concern.

According to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Body website: “Racial vilification is against the law. It is a public act that could incite hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule towards people of a particular race … Public acts include: communications that can be seen or heard by the public (this includes print, radio, video or online).”

Given this, we should rightly ask: Why aren’t these Muslim leaders being called out by our leaders and charged by the appropriate authorities?

If what has been published about the rants of the Muslim cleric on New Year’s Eve are not a public act that could incite hatred, serious contempt or ridicule against Jews, then, short of mob violence, what else would?

Last year there were similar rants against Jews coming from Sydney-based mosques. The AFP investigated and nothing was done about it. If that meant our laws were not strong enough to warrant a prosecution then they need urgent strengthening. If this remains unchecked, we are witnessing something akin to the anti-Semitic rage that Germany saw in the early 1930s. We cannot let this fester.

Our country is one of migrants. Almost 26 per cent of Australians, according to the 2022 census, were born overseas; 3.2 per cent of Australian identify as Indigenous and the remainder (more than 70 per cent) come from migrants, either forced or voluntary, who settled here since the First Fleet.

And these migrants come from many diverse cultures and countries. But having come here, we all assume a responsibility to abide by our laws and leave behind the difficulties that drove us and our forebears to come to this great country. Australia is one of the great success stories of the world, welcoming millions of migrants, who over centuries have suffered discrimination and hardship whether because of ethnicity, race, colour, gender or faith.

My own ancestors hailing from Ireland came to this great country in the 1840s and 1860s, escaping famine and prejudice. They were welcomed, and toiled to create a comfortable environment to raise children and eventually prosper. But they left their troubles behind. They were forward-looking and contributed to what makes our country great.

Respect and tolerance are two important foundational principles of our nation. They are what has made our country welcoming to migrants. They have contributed to the stability, growth and progress of our society. We have evolved and thrown off the dark cloak of the White Australia policy. We have turned instead to fostering harmonious relationships, promoted social justice, encouraged personal growth and fostered innovation. We have achieved this amid a framework of a very broad and diverse population with many differences in religion, race, ethnicity and personal backgrounds.

As we approach Australia Day, I am prompted to write about these characteristics because I can see troubling factors that, if not addressed now, will lead to undermining our respect and tolerance of our fellow Australians and possible violent conflict. The rants of the Muslim clerics I have referred to are of a grave concern. And equally concerning if, it is shown to be the case, two Australians and their wives left the country to be with an outlaw terrorist group. It may be that their travel was innocent and they have been hijacked by the Hezbollah movement as their own. Whatever the case, we must be proactive and show zero tolerance to citizens who wish to either bring their fights into this country or wish to go back and continue their fights in the country they or their forebears were born in.

There is no place in our society to bring the hatred and intolerance that have stewed (over centuries in many cases) in countries migrants have left for these shores. Many of my forebears died in the potato famine in Ireland in the 19th century. Some fought for independence. But those who migrated to Australia left their troubles in Ireland and never deigned to imbue into their descendants a continuing hatred of the English or a continuation of the struggle for Irish independence.

Their focus was building a life here and contributing to the society here and its good governance and development.

Religious leaders must be careful what they say and must not stir animosity against other groups. The tragedy unfolding in the Middle East is horrific. But we need to be vigilant that it is not imported here. And there are troubling signs it is. For example, the continuing demonstrations for a peaceful resolution of the conflict risk turning into not only an anti- Semitic rave but a violent one at that.

Our leaders need to call out this behaviour and ensure any extremist or threatening conduct is strongly condemned, and those who breach our discrimination laws or incite violence are jumped on immediately and charged with the appropriate offences.

We have seen this before in our community. In the 1970s and 1980s we had problems emanating between the Serbian and Croat communities in Australia. Both groups migrated from what was then Yugoslavia and as tensions rose at that time in the Balkans between the two groups there, these tensions were reflected in Australia. This escalated to several instances of violence and conflict. We cannot allow this to happen again.

Iran twin blasts kill 95 near grave of Revolutionary Guards general Qasem Soleimani

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

04 January 2024, The Australian

Twin bomb blasts killed 95 people in Iran on Wednesday, ripping through a crowd commemorating Revolutionary Guards general Qasem Soleimani four years after his death in a US strike, state media reported.

At least 211 others were wounded by the blasts near the tomb of Major General Soleimani.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed “evil and criminal enemies” of the country for the attack and vowed a “harsh response.”

The two explosions — labelled a “terrorist attack” by state media and regional authorities — came amid high Middle East tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and the killing of a Hamas senior leader, Saleh al-Arouri, in Lebanon on Tuesday.

Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi condemned the “heinous crime” and threatened Israel with revenge.

“We warn the Zionist entity – you will pay a heavy price for the crime in Kerman, we will make you regret it. Operation ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ continues – and its end will be the end of the Zionist entity,” he said.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force blamed Israel and the US, saying: “The day will come when the United States will be forced to pay for its support of Israel.”

Israel refused to comment on whether it was responsible for the blasts but the US State Department declared it was “ridiculous” to suggest either country was responsible.

A senior White House official said the attack had the hallmarks of an ISIS attack.

“It does look like a terrorist attack, the kind of thing ISIS has done in the past, and that’s our ongoing assumption at the moment,” they told reporters.

The unclaimed attacks — which sparked fears of a widening conflict in the region — rattled global markets where oil prices jumped more than three per cent.

The blasts, about 15 minutes apart, struck near the Martyrs Cemetery at the Saheb al-Zaman Mosque in Kerman, Soleimani’s southern hometown, as supporters gathered to mark his killing in a 2020 US drone strike in Baghdad.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency initially reported 103 people were killed while state television said 211 were wounded, some in critical condition.

Health minister Bahram Eynollahi later revised the toll, saying: “The exact number of the people killed in the terrorist incident is 95”.

He said the reason for the earlier figure of 103 was that some names “were wrongly registered twice”.

Three paramedics who rushed to the scene after the first explosion were among those killed, said Iran’s Red Crescent.

IRNA said the first explosion took place around 700 metres from Soleimani’s grave while the other was around one kilometre away.

Tasnim news agency, quoting what it called informed sources, said “two bags carrying bombs went off” and “the perpetrators … apparently detonated the bombs by remote control”.

Online footage showed panicked crowds scrambling to flee as security personnel cordoned off the area.

State television showed bloodied victims lying on the ground and ambulances and rescue personnel racing to help them.

“We were walking towards the cemetery when a car suddenly stopped behind us and a waste bin containing a bomb exploded,” an eyewitness was quoted saying by the ISNA news agency.

“We only heard the explosion and saw people falling.”

By nightfall, crowds returned back the Martyrs Cemetery in Kerman chanting: “Death to Israel” and “Death to America”.

In Tehran, thousands gathered at the Grand Mosalla Mosque to pay tribute to Soleimani.

“We condemn today’s bitter terrorist incident … I hope the perpetrators of the crime will be identified and punished for their actions,” Soleimani’s daughter, Zeinab, said.

Soleimani headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, overseeing military operations across the Middle East.

The twin blasts were denounced by the European Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Irad and Jordan.

“The EU condemns in the strongest terms today’s bombing … This act of terror has exacted a shocking toll of civilian deaths and injuries,” an EU statement said.

“The killing of peaceful people visiting the cemetery is shocking in its cruelty and cynicism,” Putin wrote to Raisi and Khamenei.

Iraq — where some 3,000 people gathered in Baghdad Tuesday to commemorate Soleimani — said it was ready to help “to alleviate the impact of this cowardly criminal act”.

The blasts came a day after Hamas number two Saleh al-Aruri — an Iran ally — was killed in a strike, which Lebanese officials blamed on Israel, on a southern Beirut suburb that is a stronghold of Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.

Wednesday’s bomb blasts were Iran’s deadliest since a 1978 arson Cinema Rex attack in the southwestern city of Abadan, which killed at least 377 people, according to AFP archives.

Iran has long fought a shadow war of killings and sabotage with arch enemy Israel and also battled various jihadist and other militant groups.

In September, the Fars news agency reported that a key “operative” affiliated with the Islamic State group, in charge of carrying out “terrorist operations” in Iran, had been arrested in Kerman.

In July, Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had disbanded a network “linked to Israel’s spy organisation” which had been plotting “terrorist operations” across Iran, IRNA reported.

The alleged plots included “planning an explosion at the grave” of Soleimani, it said.

Soleimani, whom Khamenei years ago declared a “living martyr”, was widely regarded as a hero in Iran for his role in defeating IS in both Iraq and Syria.

Long seen as a deadly adversary by the United States and its allies, Soleimani was one of the most important powerbrokers across the region, setting Iran’s political and military agenda in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

– AFP

Hezbollah warns of all-out war if IDF escalates in Lebanon

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

04 January 2024, The Australian, by Catherine Philip

Hezbollah’s supreme leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has warned Israel not to take military action against Lebanon, saying it is ready for war “without limits” should Israel attack.

Nasrallah declared Israel’s enemies had become “bolder than before, more willing to wage war than before” after Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, which he celebrated as an act of resistance that had “brought down the idea of Israel as a safe haven for Jews”.

“Today I will not make any threats,” he said. “But if the enemy decides to wage war on Lebanon, our combat will have no ceiling, no limit.”

Painting Hezbollah as the protector of the Lebanese state, he declared: “If war is waged against Lebanon, the national interest will cause us to go to war without limit.

“We do not fear war. If we were afraid we would not have opened a new front,” he said, referring to the escalating exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel across the Lebanese border in recent days.

He mocked the US decision to pull back a carrier strike from the eastern Mediterranean, saying “the Americans are leaving without any results”, urging Israeli Jews to go with them. “If you want to feel secure, go back to the United States,” he said. “If you have a British passport go back to the UK.”

Nasrallah addressed supporters the day after a senior Hamas leader, Saleh al-Arouri, was assassinated in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut, killing him and six other Hamas figures he was meeting.

Arouri was one of the few Hamas figures outside Gaza with advance knowledge of the October 7 attack and the chief Hamas liaison with Hezbollah.

Iran, the state sponsor behind both Hamas and Hezbollah, called the airstrike a “cowardly terrorist operation”. Nasrallah called the strike “a serious assault on Lebanon that will not go unanswered or unpunished”, equating the attack on Arouri to an attack on the sovereign state.

Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility for the strike on Arouri, though it has made clear its intention to eliminate all figures associated with the October 7 attacks, in Gaza or abroad.

Middle Eastern intelligence sources told The Times the attack was authorised when Hamas members were alone in the targeted room. And a US Defence Department official told Agence France-Presse Israel carried out the strike.

David Barnea, Israel’s spy chief, all but admitted responsibility when he drew a comparison between Israel’s campaign to eradicate Hamas to Mossad’s deadly manhunt for the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich massacre targeting Israeli Olympic athletes.

Speaking at the funeral of Zvi Zamir, who masterminded the post-Munich assassination campaign, Mr Barnea warned that Israel would not hesitate to act against any of those involved in Hamas’s deadly attack.

Mossad “is committed to settling the score with the murderers who descended upon the Gaza envelope on October 7”, he warned. “It will take time, just like after the Munich massacre, but we will lay our hands on them wherever they will be. Every Arab mother ought know that if her son participated, directly or indirectly, in the slaughter of October 7, his blood shall be upon his own head.”

Earlier, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned Arouri’s killing, claiming it “aims to draw Lebanon” further into the conflict. Similar concerns were echoed by the UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, which warned of “devastating consequences for people on both sides” should the conflict escalate.

Israel has repeatedly warned Hezbollah it is ready to take military action if the militia does not move assets and troops back from the border and halt its strikes. The brazen assassination of Arouri in Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold, however, sent shockwaves through Lebanon. Arouri is one of several exiled Hamas leaders who have found refuge under Hezbollah’s protection in Lebanon.

Lebanese security officials said the strikes used guided missiles that were launched by an Israeli warplane. According to one official, the guided missiles used in the attack weigh around 100kg, making them too heavy to have been fired by a drone.

“A drone could not have carried out such a precise strike,” the official with knowledge of the official Lebanese investigation into Arouri’s killing told AFP.

Six missiles were used, four of which exploded, two after piercing through two floors and exploding in a room where Arouri was holding a meeting with six other Hamas officials, killing them all.

Nasrallah hinted that he too could be targeted by Israel, saying he would have more to say on the current conflict during a sermon planned for Friday “if God keeps me alive”.

– The Times

Israel at war: Fight for Khan Younis puts Israel, US on collision course

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

Welcome to The Australian’s rolling coverage of Israel’s conflict with Hamas.

Fight for Khan Younis puts Israel on collision course with US

The southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis is a critical target for Israel’s military—strategically and symbolically. The centuries-old market town is the suspected hiding place of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the militant group’s most significant remaining military stronghold.

But the fight to capture it risks putting Israel on a collision course with the Biden administration, which has called on Israel to minimise civilian casualties and ease humanitarian deprivation in Gaza, and to hew to a more limited war aim of expelling Hamas from power.

Khan Younis, a city of 400,000 people in normal times, almost doubled in size as Gazans fled there from the bombed-out remains of Gaza City. That makes it a treacherous battlefield as Israel fights militants in the midst of crowded neighborhoods.

Winning control of southern Gaza’s biggest city would allow Israeli troops to surround Hamas’s remaining fighters and effectively remove the U.S.-designated terrorist group from power in the Gaza Strip.

Israel would need to decide whether to keep waging conventional war against remaining Hamas forces with the airstrikes, ground forces and artillery that have impaired the militants’ fighting power but also caused civilian casualties. Or it could begin to shift to limited special-forces operations to target remaining Hamas cells, a potentially yearslong fight that would have U.S. support but also require a long-term presence that could be criticized as occupation.

In Israel last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told officials in Israel’s war cabinet that the Biden administration believed the conflict should end in weeks, not months, said U.S. officials with knowledge of the discussions. Israeli officials made no guarantees but expressed their interest in a return to normal, particularly so that the country doesn’t take a hit economically, the officials said.

“We all recognize the longer this war goes on, the harder it gets for everybody,” said a US official.

The US and Israel have also used different rhetoric about war aims, with the US focusing on ending Hamas’s reign in power and some Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, talking about eradicating the militant group—something Washington sees as impossible.

Looming over all of it is a sense that domestic political pressure on President Biden, who is heading into an election year, has put a time limit on such active American support for the Israeli war effort. Biden’s support for Israel has hurt him with left-leaning Democrats, polls show, as images of dead children and other innocent civilians proliferate across news pages and social media.

Dow Jones

New crossing ‘set to open for aid to Gaza’

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths has said he saw promising signs Thursday that the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into the Gaza Strip might be opened soon to allow aid in.

The checkpoint was responsible for 60 percent of goods getting into the besieged Palestinian territory before October 7 and the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Griffiths said that in recent days there had been signs that key countries — notably Gaza’s neighbours Israel and Egypt — have become much more open to the idea of gradually reopening Kerem Shalom.

“We’re still negotiating, and with some promising signs at the moment, access through Kerem Shalom… that that may be able to open soon,” Griffiths told a press conference in Geneva.

An Israeli siege has seen only limited supplies of food, water, fuel and medicines enter Gaza, triggering dire shortages.

Currently only the Rafah border crossing with Egypt is open for any aid to flow into Gaza.

“We have been arguing for the opening of Kerem Shalom, not just as an opening to allow trucks to go there, to then go through Rafah and then up into Gaza — but to go straight through Kerem Shalom up into the northern parts of Gaza, or wherever the need is greatest,” Griffiths said.

“If we get that — it will be the first miracle we’ve seen for some weeks — but it will be a huge boost to the logistical process… it would change the nature of humanitarian access.”

AFP

Body cam footage shows Hamas fighters inside building

The Israeli Defence Forces have released a video from a Hamas fighter’s body cam which shows militants armed with RPGs and Kalashnikovs setting up anti-tank missile positions inside a building.

The video shows three militants setting up position before they are killed by a drone.

“The squad was attacked by a remote manned aircraft of the Air Force, under the direction of the brigade’s fire intelligence information and the fighters on the ground,” said IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.

The IDF said the video cam was found on the body of one of the fighters.

Public order breaking down in south Gaza

Public order is breaking down in southern Gaza as Israel’s military offensive dislodges Hamas’s control of the enclave, preventing aid deliveries to Palestinians who are reporting cases of starvation and disease.

In a sign of the growing desperation for tens of thousands of displaced civilians, people in Khan Younis — a southern city that has doubled in size since residents fled there from bombed-out Gaza City — broke into the United Nations’ warehouse and took food supplies, which left the U.N. with nothing to distribute there Thursday.

The UN said Thursday that its operations were near collapse and it was unable to send aid beyond the strip’s southernmost city of Rafah, and only patchy delivery to Khan Younis. The UN said that Israeli military restrictions have made it impossible to distribute aid in Gaza anywhere beyond the small area along the Egyptian border.

The rapid deterioration of basic living standards adds to a humanitarian crisis that will be the subject of a United Nations Security Council meeting Friday, putting pressure on Israel to end the war before its war aims are achieved. It also illustrates how Hamas — which ruled Gaza’s streets with a strict authoritarianism for 16 years — was losing control over all but a few pockets of territory.

Dow Jones

Wong to visit Israel, Middle East

Foreign Minister Penny Wong will visit Israel within weeks as part of a wider Middle East trip to urge regional leaders to chart an end to the war in Gaza.

Assistant Foreign Minister Tim Watts will lay the groundwork for the trip, announcing on Thursday he would travel to Israel, Qatar and Egypt next week. “Arrangements are being made for the Foreign Minister to visit the Middle East early in the new year,” Senator Wong’s spokeswoman told The Australian. “Australia has been working with countries that have influence in the region to help protect and support civilians, to help prevent the conflict from spreading and to reinforce the need for the just and enduring peace that all of us want.”

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham is also due to visit Israel next week, leading a bipartisan delegation that will include the Victorian Labor MPs Josh Burns and Michelle Ananda-Rajah, the LNP’s Andrew Wallace and Victorian Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie.

Senator Wong will seek to meet key counterparts in Israel, the West Bank and countries with influence in the wider region.

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Israeli minister’s son killed in fighting

The son of a member of Israel’s war cabinet has been killed in fighting with Hamas.

Gal Meir Eisenkot, 25, a reserve soldier, was killed alongside another reservist, Jonathan David Deitch, 34.

Gal Eisenkot, is the son of former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, a member of Benny Gantz’s opposition National Unity party, which has joined Israel’s emergency government.

Mr Eisenkot received the news while touring the IDF’s Southern Command alongside Mr Gantz.

Mr Gantz posted his condolences Mr Eisenkot and his family on X, saying Israel was committed to continue fighting for the cause for which Gal had died.

Link to twitter post: https://twitter.com/gantzbe/status/1732797199916912818

“Gadi, we’ve known each other for years,” he said. “I know how strong you are and how united your family is. You’ve always protected our home as well as your personal home. I’m sure that this will remain. You will look after your family and you will all keep each other strong.”

Extraordinary pictures emerge of Hamas prisoners

Extraordinary video and pictures have emerged of scores of Palestinian prisoners who Israel media is reporting to be Hamas militants.

In one picture, published across Israeli media, the men, stripped to their underwear, appear to be seated in the desert guarded by Israeli Defence Forces troops. In another, they line two streets in the city of Jabaliya.

In a third, they are seen being driven away in an army truck.

Israeli forces regularly strip their captives to ensure they are not carrying concealed weapons or explosives.

Channel 12, which published the photographs and video, said they were of the capture of “apparently” Hamas members in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Describing the capture as a “round up” of militants, Channel 12 reported that some of those photographed had surrendered to the Israeli military.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters: “Jabaliya and Shejaiya are ‘centres of gravity’… for terrorists, and we are fighting them. They are hiding underground and come out and we fight them. Whoever is left in those areas, they come out from tunnel shafts, and some from buildings, and we investigate who is linked to Hamas, and who isn’t. We arrest them all and interrogate them.”

Palestinian photographer Abdul Hakim Abu Rayash, told The Washington Post that among those detained is journalist Diaa al-Kahlout, the Gaza bureau chief of Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed newspaper.