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GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Palestinian mother Rasha Qadoom clutches tight the tiny pink rucksack belonging to her five-year-old daughter Alaa — which will never again be carried on her little back.

Alaa was the first of 16 children killed in three days of intense conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants in the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

“It was a Friday like any other,” said Qadoom, 27, remembering how Alaa had been dressed in a pink T-shirt to match her pink bag with a pink ribbon tied in her hair.

“She was happy, she wanted to go to the park with her aunt.”

But as she went to her aunt on Friday afternoon, Israel launched an intense “pre-emptive” bombardment of militant positions.

Alaa was knocking on the door of her aunt’s home when a missile smashed down from the sky.

Later that day — hours after Alaa was killed — militants began firing barrages of rockets in retaliation, violence that raged until a tenuous truce came into force late Sunday.

‘Clothes full of blood’ 

In her hands, Qadoom holds the blood-stained rags of Alaa’s T-shirt, unable to comprehend why her daughter died.

“Nobody was armed in the neighbourhood. Instead of going to play in the park, she came back to me with clothes full of blood,” she said.

“What was the point of this war?” she asked. “We lost children... all her dreams were on a school bag and a notebook.”

The Israeli air and artillery strikes targeted positions of the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad group.

The health ministry in the Palestinian territory run by the Islamist group Hamas said 46 people were killed, including 16 children.

After the strike in which Alaa was killed, the Israeli forces said it was targeting members of Islamic Jihad operating in the area.

Israel also said that some of the civilian deaths recorded in the Palestinian toll were the result of militant rockets that fell short or misfired.

Elsewhere in Gaza City, a few blocks back from the Mediterranean Sea in a neighbourhood with houses crammed tight together, the home of the Shamalagh was blown up.

Only a gaping hole remains.

Poking out of the slabs of smashed concrete are the remains of people’s lives; a new fridge, a sofa crushed by tons of concrete, a stuffed toy animal.

Dozens of paper scraps from what was an English textbook lie in the dirt.

One page, a lesson focused on the British seaside town of St Ives, sets a task for schoolchildren in the blockaded enclave: “Think of your ideal location for a holiday.”

The shattered building was once home to 17 people, including children, who were given just a 30-minute warning to leave by Israel before the devastating air strikes hit.

Sitting beside the ruins of her home, 70-year-old Nadia Shamalagh said that, even after the Egypt-brokered ceasefire began late Sunday, she struggled to rest.

“I couldn’t sleep, I was staring at the ceiling and thinking ‘they [Israel] are going to strike’”, she said.

“Everyone was scared, the children couldn’t stop crying”.

‘Tragedy’ 

Shamalagh says they had nothing to do with any of the Palestinian political or militant groups.

“They are not linked to Hamas, Fateh or Islamic Jihad,” she said.

In Gaza, the cost of war on children is not only on those killed or wounded but impacting all.

The conflict was the worst violence in Gaza since an 11-day war between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in May 2021, when 66 children died in Gaza, and two in Israel.

In June, Save the Children had already warned in a report of the impact on the young since conflict escalated with Israel in 2007 after the Islamist group Hamas took control in Gaza.

“During this time, their childhoods have been marred by five escalations in violence and a decade and a half of blockade,” the aid agency said.

“They have repeatedly experienced or witnessed traumatic events and serious violations of their rights.”

In her exhaustion, Shamalagh simply repeats a phrase, over and over.

“What is this life?” she said. “Are we going to continue to live this tragedy?”

Behind her, two girls have dragged a plank of wood out of the wreckage and placed it on a concrete block, sitting on either side and rocking on a makeshift seesaw.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Hizbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah warned Israel on Tuesday against reaching for offshore gas reserves at a time US-mediated talks are aiming to settle a maritime border dispute.

“The hand that reaches for any of this wealth will be severed,” Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed Shiite Muslim political and military movement, told supporters in southern Beirut, a Hizbollah stronghold.

“Lebanon’s oil, gas and water resources must remain under its control and no one should be allowed to rob the country,” he said in his televised speech marking the Shiite mourning ritual of Ashura.

The dispute escalated in early June after Israel moved a production vessel near the Karish offshore field, which is partly claimed by Lebanon.

This prompted Beirut to call for the resumption of US-mediated negotiations, while Nasrallah has responded by repeatedly launching threats.

On July 2, Israel said it had downed three drones launched by Hizbollah that were headed towards Karish.

That same month, the movement released a video it said showed surveillance of several Israeli-chartered ships, including the production vessel sent to Karish.

Nasrallah’s comments on Tuesday came as Lebanon awaits a response from Israel to an offer on the border dispute it submitted to US mediator Amos Hochstein last month.

Nasrallah said that “we are waiting for a response to the demands of the Lebanese state, and we will respond accordingly, but I tell you ... we must be ready and prepared for all possibilities.

“We will go all the way, so no one should try us.”

Lebanon and Israel, which fought their last war in 2006, had resumed maritime border negotiations in 2020 but the process had been stalled until the latest developments revived negotiations in June.

Hochstein told a Lebanon broadcaster this month that he is working towards a solution that would allow Israel to continue operations in Karish while also allowing Lebanon to enter the energy market.

An Israeli official last month said Israel’s offer would allow Lebanon to develop the so-called Sidon reservoir, also known as the Qana field, which is located in the disputed zone.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — An Iranian satellite launched by Russia blasted off from Kazakhstan on Tuesday and reached orbit amid controversy that Moscow might use it to boost its surveillance of military targets in Ukraine.

As Russia's international isolation grows following Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is seeking to pivot Russia towards the Middle East, Asia and Africa and find new clients for the country's embattled space programme.

Speaking at the Moscow-controlled Baikonur cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe, Russian space chief Yury Borisov hailed "an important milestone in Russian-Iranian bilateral cooperation, opening the way to the implementation of new and even larger projects".

Iran's Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour, who also attended the launch of the Khayyam satellite, called the event "historic" and "a turning point for the start of a new interaction in the field of space between our two countries".

Nasser Kanani, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said on Twitter that "the brilliant path of scientific and technological progress of the Islamic republic of Iran continues despite sanctions and the enemies' maximum pressure".

Iran, which has maintained ties with Moscow and refrained from criticism of the Ukraine invasion, has sought to deflect suspicions that Moscow could use Khayyam to spy on Ukraine.

Last week, The Washington Post quoted anonymous Western intelligence officials as saying that Russia "plans to use the satellite for several months or longer" to assist its war efforts before allowing Iran to take control.

Less than two hours after the satellite was launched on a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, the Iran Space Agency (ISA) said "ground stations of the Iran Space Agency" had already received "first telemetric data".

The space agency stressed on Sunday that the Islamic republic would control the satellite “from day one” in an apparent reaction to the Post’s report.

“No third country is able to access the information” sent by the satellite due to its “encrypted algorithm”, it said.

The purpose of Khayyam is to “monitor the country’s borders”, enhance agricultural productivity and monitor water resources and natural disasters, according to the space agency.

‘Long-term cooperation’ 

Khayyam, apparently named after the 11th-century Persian polymath Omar Khayyam, will not be the first Iranian satellite that Russia has put into space.

In 2005, Iran’s Sina-1 satellite was deployed from Russia’s Plesetsk cosmodrome.

Iran is currently negotiating with world powers, including Moscow, to salvage a 2015 deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The United States — which quit the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump — has accused Iran of effectively supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine while adopting a “veil of neutrality”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran last month — one of his few trips abroad since Moscow’s February 24 invasion.

Iran’s Khamenei called for “long-term cooperation” with Russia during their meeting, and Tehran has refused to join international condemnation of Moscow’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbour.

Iran insists its space programme is for civilian and defence purposes only, and does not breach the 2015 nuclear deal, or any other international agreement.

Western governments worry that satellite launch systems incorporate technologies interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, something Iran has always denied wanting to build.

Iran successfully put its first military satellite into orbit in April 2020, drawing a sharp rebuke from the United States.

On the eve of the Khayyam launch, ISA praised “the high reliability factor of the Soyuz launcher”.

Borisov, who last month replaced bombastic nationalist Dmitry Rogozin as head of the Russian space agency, had acknowledged that the national space industry is in a “difficult situation” amid tensions with the West.

Russia will continue its space programme but end activities at the International Space Station — an outlier of cooperation between Moscow and the West — after 2024, he said.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Shell-shocked Gazans on Monday sifted through the rubble of three days of deadly conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad fighters as a truce held and life slowly returned to normal.

An Egypt-brokered ceasefire reached late Sunday ended the intense fighting that killed 44 people, including 15 children, and wounded 360 in the enclave according to Gaza's health ministry.

Israel had since Friday launched a heavy aerial and artillery bombardment of Islamic Jihad positions in Gaza, leading the fighters to fire over a thousand rockets in retaliation, according to the Israeli army.

As relative calm returned to Gaza Monday, and electricity was restored, Palestinians tried to salvage their belongings from the rubble of shattered homes and to start clearing the debris.

"We received the news of the ceasefire with joy and happiness and we went back to our work," said Gaza shopkeeper Hazem Douima.

"We did not want more bloodshed."

Bereaved families buried their dead, including at one funeral joined by hundreds of mourners in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip where a family laid to rest four minors killed in the conflict.

"Gaza is tending to its wounds," said one resident, Mohammed Alai.

A senior Israeli diplomatic official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that "most of the civilians who were killed in Gaza were killed by Islamic Jihad rockets" that fell short or misfired.

Gaza’s sole power plant, after a two-day shutdown, “started working to generate electricity”, said spokesman Mohammed Thabet, hours after fuel trucks passed the reopened good border crossing.

The outage had sparked fears about the impact on hospitals overwhelmed with casualties amid Gaza’s worst fighting since an 11-day war with Hamas last year.

‘Right to respond’ 

The Israeli forces said roads would gradually reopen in the border area where restrictions were imposed in the lead-up to the offensive, which Israel said was launched to stop looming attacks.

Three people in Israel were wounded by shrapnel and 31 lightly hurt while running for safety, emergency services said.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s office late Sunday agreed to the truce but said that “if the ceasefire is violated”, Israel “maintains the right to respond strongly”.

Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed group designated as a terrorist organisation by several Western nations, also accepted the truce but said it too “reserves the right to respond”.

US President Joe Biden welcomed the truce and thanked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi for Cairo’s role in brokering it.

European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell warned it was “crucial to work to consolidate the ceasefire”.

Tehran said it will always “defend the active resistance”.

Islamic Jihad said 12 of its leaders and members had been killed.

The group’s Mohammad Al Hindi said the ceasefire deal “contains Egypt’s commitment to work towards the release of two prisoners”.

They were named as Bassem Al aadi, a senior figure in the group’s political wing who was recently arrested in the occupied West Bank, and Khalil Awawdeh, a fighter also in Israeli detention.

‘Serious blow’ 

North of Gaza in the Israeli city of Ashkelon where air raid silents had wailed and people fled to bunkers, beachgoers returned to the Mediterranean shore.

Sitting in a cafe, Eitan Casandini said locals were feeling “very good”.

“After we destroy them we can sleep peacefully,” he told AFP. “I don’t think [Islamic] Jihad will do anything again in the next three or four years.”

Islamic Jihad is aligned with Gaza’s rulers Hamas but often acts independently.

Hamas has fought four wars with Israel since seizing control of the enclave in 2007, including the conflict in May last year.

Israel has said it was necessary to launch a “pre-emptive” operation against Islamic Jihad, while the diplomatic official said the group had been planning an attack by sniper fire or with anti-tank missiles.

The army killed senior leaders of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, including Taysir Al Jabari and Khaled Mansour.

The senior Israeli diplomatic official said Islamic Jihad had been dealt “a very serious blow” which had “taken them back decades”.

PARIS — The main developments in Iran’s nuclear programme since 2015, as Tehran examines a “final text” in Vienna aimed at restoring a landmark deal with world powers.

Historic accord

In 2013, newly elected Iranian president Hassan Rouhani says he is ready for “serious” negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme, following an eight-year stalemate under ultraconservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Rouhani secures support from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for efforts to break the deadlock.

On July 14, 2015, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany reach a historic accord in Vienna.

The deal places significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief after 12 years of crisis and 21 months of protracted negotiations. It comes into force on January 16, 2016.

Under the accord, Tehran’s nuclear programme is placed under strict UN control subject to guarantees it is not trying to make an atom bomb, something Iran has always denied.

 Trump pulls out 

US president Donald Trump walks away from the deal on May 8, 2018.

“We cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” he says.

Deal critics had complained from the start about the time limits applied to the deal.

Later in 2018, Washington begins reimposing sanctions on Iran and companies with ties to it, hitting the central bank and the country’s vital oil sector.

Major international firms halt activities in the country.

Iran walks back

In May 2019, Iran starts rolling back on its deal commitments in retaliation.

Trump hits back by sanctioning Iran’s steel and mining sectors.

Tehran increases its stockpile of enriched uranium in excess of the limits laid down in the deal.

It announces in early 2020 it is foregoing a limit on its number of uranium-enriching centrifuges.

In 2021, Iran says it has started enriching uranium to up to 60 per cent — many times the limit of 3.67 per cent imposed by the deal — which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says could be sufficient to create a compact nuclear explosive.

Vienna talks 

In April 2021, with President Joe Biden now in the White House, talks on rescuing the accord start in Vienna.

Iran’s new ultraconservative president, Ebrahim Raisi, says in August he is open to negotiations but will not be pressured by sanctions.

Talks resume in November.

Compromise ‘close’ 

Just as a deal looks imminent, Russia invades Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and Moscow becomes the target of international sanctions. The negotiations are delayed.

In mid-March, Washington says a compromise is “close”, but Tehran raises some “red line” issues, including its bid to have all sanctions lifted.

 New US sanctions 

On March 30, Washington sanctions suppliers to Tehran’s ballistic missiles programme, which Iran dubs “another sign of the US government’s malice” towards the Islamic republic.

Nuclear watchdog 

raps Iran 

On June 8, the IAEA adopts a resolution submitted by Britain, France, Germany and the United States that condemns Iran for the first time in two years.

Iran responds by removing surveillance cameras at nuclear facilities.

On June 16, Washington sanctions a network of Iranian petrochemical firms.

‘No progress’ at Qatar talks 

In late June, two days of EU-brokered indirect talks in Doha between Iran and the United States conclude with no progress.

Return to Vienna 

On July 26, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says he has submitted a draft text of a deal, urging parties to accept it or “risk a dangerous nuclear crisis”.

On August 4, negotiators gather for a fresh round of talks.

On August 7, Iran demands that the UN nuclear watchdog “completely” resolve outstanding issues related to questions over nuclear material at undeclared sites.

On August 8, Iran says it is examining a “final text” presented by the European Union.

BEIRUT — More than 30 people fled a Lebanon detention centre at dawn on Sunday, security forces said, after sawing their way through a window, according to a judicial official.

"At dawn... 31 detainees managed to escape" from a detention centre in the Adlieh district of the capital Beirut, the Internal Security Forces said in a statement.

"Immediate orders were given to arrest them and investigations are under way."

The detainees broke past a prison window using a saw smuggled into the facility, said a judicial official close to an investigation into the incident.

"The escapees include Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians, among other foreigners," he told AFP on condition of anonymity.

On Sunday morning, an AFP correspondent saw security forces and army personnel deployed in the Beirut neighbourhood housing the jail.

The Adlieh detention centre was formerly controlled by Lebanon's General Security agency but is now manged by the country's prison authority.

It was notorious for abuses committed against detained Syrian refugees and foreign migrant domestic workers, according to rights groups, including Human Rights Watch.

Bassam Al Kantar of Lebanon's National Human Rights Commission said the facility was among the country's worst, suffering from overcrowding, foul sewage smells and lack of ventilation and sunlight.

"Detainees are malnourished... and are not allowed to receive food from their families," he said.

"Healthcare is also non-existent, with a large number of detainees suffering from skin diseases," mainly due to lack of hygiene measures in the facility, he added.

The prison break came as Lebanon grapples with an unprecedented economic crisis that has seen the value of the Lebanese pound lose more than 90 per cent of its value against the dollar on the black market.

Inflation has skyrocketed and public sector salaries have plummeted to record lows, forcing a large number of soldiers and other members of the security forces to quit in order to try to eke out an alternative living.

The crisis has also further degraded Lebanon's already dismal jails, with poor conditions and lack of medical care regularly sparking prison riots and unrest.

GAZA CIty, Palestinian Territories - The death toll from escalating violence in Gaza rose to 24 on Saturday, including six children, as Israel extended its bombardment of Palestinian militants who have retaliated with a barrage of rockets.

The updated fatality count from health authorities in Hamas Islamist run Gaza said six children were among those killed since the start of the "Israeli aggression" on Friday, in addition to 204 injured.

But Israel said it has "irrefutable" evidence that stray rocket from Islamic Jihad militants was responsible for the death of multiple children in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on Saturday.

It was not immediately clear how many children were killed in the incident in Jabalia. An AFP photographer saw six dead bodies at an area hospital, including three minors.

Israeli forces has warned its aerial and artillery campaign against Islamic Jihad could last a week, but Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said Cairo is talking "around the clock" with both sides to ease the violence.

Israel has said it was necessary to launch a "pre-emptive" operation against Islamic Jihad, saying the group was planning an imminent attack following days of tensions along the border with Gaza.

Civilians, meanwhile, took refuge in air raid shelters on the Israeli side, with AFP journalists hearing sirens warning of incoming fire in the Tel Aviv area on Saturday evening.

Israel's ongoing strikes are being met with flurries of rockets from the Palestinian side, stoking fears of a repeat of an 11-day conflict that devastated Gaza in May 2021.

Daily life in Gaza has come to a standstill, while the electricity distributor said the sole power station shut down due to a lack of fuel after Israel closed its border crossings.

Gaza's health ministry said the next few hours will be "crucial and difficult", warning it risked suspending vital services within 72 hours as a result of the lack of electricity.

 Five-year-old girl

Mohammed Abu Salameh, the director of Shifa, Gaza City's main hospital, said medics are facing "acute shortages of medical supplies".

The UN humanitarian chief for the occupied Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings, urged the warring sides to allow "fuel, food, and medical supplies" to be delivered to Gaza amid the worsening crisis.

On Friday, the health ministry reported "a five-year-old girl" was among those killed by Israeli fire.

The girl, Alaa Kaddum, had a pink bow in her hair and a wound on her forehead, as her body was carried by her father at her funeral.

The Gaza strikes follow the arrest in the occupied West Bank of two senior members of Islamic Jihad, including Bassem Al Saadi, who Israel accuses of orchestrating recent attacks.

Israel on Saturday broadened its operation against Islamic Jihad, announcing the arrest of 19 people in the West Bank it said were members of the group.

Israel has conducted a wave of often deadly raids in the West Bank since mid-March in response to lethal attacks on Israelis.