Page 31 - Palestine

In first call with Palestinian prez, Biden talks support for aid to Gaza

President Joe Biden on Saturday spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging the leaders to allow humanitarian aid to the region and affirmed his support for efforts to protect civilians. The weekend calls in Washington came as the US said it was moving up a second carrier strike group in support of Israel, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken intensified diplomatic outreach across the Middle East and beyond to rally an international response to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from expanding. Blinken met with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Riyadh before stopping in the United Arab Emirates as he sought ways to help civilians trapped in between the fighting and to address the growing humanitarian crisis. He also called his Chinese counterpart as Palestinians struggled to flee from areas of Gaza targeted by the Israeli military before an expected land offensive. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as wel

Families trudge through Gaza, trying to flee north before Israel's invasion

Some fled home with suitcases jammed with clothes and heirlooms and photographs. Some left with stacks of foam mattresses tied to car roofs. They took buses and vans and cars and carts pulled by donkeys. Many walked. Many had nothing with them but exhausted family members trudging through streets littered with rubble. All of them were trying to get to safety. We left the house without food, without water and without clothes, said Mohammad Hillis, sitting at a wooden school desk scarred by generations of students in a makeshift refugee camp in central Gaza. We left without taking anything with us. He said about 150 people lived in his building in their northern Gaza town. All left after clouds of Israeli leaflets began dropping from the sky, warning civilians to flee the north within 24 hours. Evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields, an Israeli statement said. It warned that ...

Israel-Hamas clash: Violence fuels growing tensions in occupied West Bank

While the world is focused on the war in Gaza, tensions have risen in the occupied West Bank, where 54 Palestinians were killed over the past week in clashes with Israeli troops, arrest raids and attacks by Jewish settlers. U.N. monitors said it was the deadliest week for Palestinians in the territory since at least 2005. Since Hamas' deadly mass incursion into southern Israel, in which militants killed over 1,300 people and captured around 150, Israeli forces have held the West Bank under a tight grip, closing crossings into the territory and checkpoints between cities, measures they say are aimed at preventing attacks. Friday was a particularly deadly day, with 16 Palestinians killed in different incidents in the West Bank. The military says it has arrested 220 people in raids across the West Bank, including 130 Hamas operatives, since last weekend's attack. Hamas militants are present in the West Bank, but largely operate underground because of Israel's tight grip on the ...

Pact reached to allow foreigners to leave Gaza amid Palestinian evacuation

Egypt, Israel and the United States have agreed to allow foreigners in Gaza to pass through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, a senior Egyptian official says. The official said Saturday that Israel has agreed to refrain from striking areas the foreigners would pass through on their way out of the besieged Palestinian territory. He said Qatar also was involved in the negotiations and the participants received also approval from the Palestinian militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. A second official at the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing point said they received instructions to reopen it on Saturday afternoon for foreigners coming from Gaza. The first official said negotiations were still underway to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza through the crossing point. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief media. Israel has ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip.

Palestinians stream south in Gaza as Israel urges a mass evacuation

Palestinians scrambled to flee northern Gaza on Saturday after the Israeli military ordered nearly half the population to evacuate south and carried out limited ground forays ahead of an expected land offensive a week after Hamas' bloody, wide-ranging attack into Israel. Israel renewed calls on social media and in leaflets dropped from the air for some 1 million Gaza residents to move south, while Hamas urged people to stay in their homes. The UN and aid groups have said such a rapid exodus would cause untold human suffering, with hospital patients and others unable to relocate. Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with possessions crowded a main road heading away from Gaza City as Israeli airstrikes continued to hammer the 40-kilometre (25-mile) long territory, where supplies of food, fuel and drinking water were running low because of a complete Israeli siege. Egyptian officials said the southern Rafah crossing would open later Saturday for the first time in days to .

Isreal's relocation order 'extremely dangerous': UN chief Guterres

Israel's ultimatum that over one million people in northern Gaza should relocate within 24 hours is "extremely dangerous" and "simply not possible", UN chief Antonio Guterres has said, asserting that "even wars have rules. UN officials in Gaza on Thursday were informed by their liaison officers in the Israeli military that the entire population of northern Gaza, approximately 1.1 million, should relocate to the southern part within the next 24 hours. The same order applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities including schools, health centres and clinics. Moving more than one million people across a densely populated warzone to a place with no food, water, or accommodation, when the entire territory is under siege, is extremely dangerous and in some cases, simply not possible, Guterres told reporters here on Friday. The UN Secretary-General made those remarks before heading to a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. He said that after days

Weekend Bites: Another war, trouble in IT paradise, carmakers, 'those guys'

In which we munch over the week's platter of news and views

Endgame for Gaza? How Hamas weaponised Palestinians’ despair

Gaza, often termed an "open-air prison", is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, making it one of the world's most densely populated regions.

Security alert issued in New Delhi as Israel-Hamas war intensifies

Security has also been stepped up at Jewish religious establishments and the Israel Embassy

Israel-Hamas war: Iran's warning, support from world leaders, and more

Israel, which has vowed to crush Hamas, is now preparing for a possible ground offensive

India always advocated for free Palestine living at peace with Israel: MEA

India sees attack by Hamas on Israel as terrorist attack, says MEA

Here's why Palestinians just can't leave Gaza during Israel-Hamas conflict

The short answer to that question is: They can't. Before I explain why, consider the lay of the land and the situation in which Gazans find themselves right now

Israel ups the ante against Hamas, vows to wipe them 'off face of Earth'

"Every Hamas terrorist is a dead man," Netanyahu said at a late-night briefing, flanked by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, the head of Israel's opposition

LIVE updates: 11 UN staff, 30 pupils at UN schools, killed in Gaza

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Kerala touch adds power to Israel police's combat gear in war against Hamas

A relatively lesser-known company, Maryan Apparel Ltd from Kannur district, has been providing uniforms to this esteemed force, recognised as one of the top police departments globally, since 2012

Israeli village near Gaza border lies in ruin, filled with bodies

On the road approaching this rural village, the bodies of militants lie scattered between the shells of burned-out cars. Walls and doors of what used to be neatly kept stucco homes are blasted wide open. As bags holding the bodies of slain residents await identification, the smell of death hangs thick in the hot afternoon air. This is the scene confronting Israel's military as it battles to beat back a sweeping assault launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip, in fighting that has killed hundreds in this country left reeling and the adjoining Palestinian enclave under heavy Israeli bombardment. You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms and how the terrorists killed, Maj. Gen. Itay Veruz, a 39-year veteran of the Israeli army who led forces that reclaimed the village from militants, said Tuesday as he stood amid the wreckage. It's not a battlefield. It's a massacre. The Israeli military led a group of journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, on a tour of

Palestinians scramble for safety as Israel pounds sealed-off Gaza Strip

Israeli warplanes hammered the Gaza Strip neighbourhood by neighbourhood Tuesday, reducing buildings to rubble and sending people scrambling to find safety in the tiny, sealed-off territory now suffering severe retaliation for the deadly weekend attack by Hamas militants. Humanitarian groups pleaded for the creation of corridors to get aid into Gaza and warned that hospitals overwhelmed with wounded people were running out of supplies. Israel has stopped entry of food, fuel and medicines into Gaza, and the sole remaining access from Egypt shut down Tuesday after airstrikes hit near the border crossing. The war, which has claimed at least 1,900 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate. The weekend attack that Hamas said was retribution for worsening conditions for Palestinians under Israeli occupation has inflamed Israel's determination to crush the group's hold in Gaza. New exchanges of fire over Israel's northern borders with militants in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday pointed to

Few good options as Israel weighs a ground assault on the Gaza strip

The public and the national security establishment in Israel are demanding retribution for the attacks by Hamas militants that claimed more than 1,000 Israeli lives over the weekend

LIVE: India's direct tax collection rises 17.95% to Rs 11.07 trillion

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At least 40 babies killed, as Israel-Hamas violence turns ghastly

This came after several soldiers were called up for reserve service, and had arrived already expecting the worst, but the scenes were beyond imagination