Region

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Thursday, killing and injuring people according to Palestinian medical sources, as the military said it had recovered the bodies of five Israelis taken to Gaza by Hamas fighers after they were killed on October 7.

A group supporting Israeli hostages still held in the Palestinian territory welcomed the rescue but alleged "sabotage" of efforts to free others. The accusation from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum came with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a visit to Washington.

Netanyahu — whose critics accuse him of prolonging the fighting — is on Thursday to meet US President Joe Biden, who has been pushing a truce and hostage-release deal.

In a speech to the US Congress on Wednesday, Netanyahu downplayed Palestinian civilian casualties during the more than nine months of war between Israeli forces and Hamas.

At least 39,175 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not give details of civilian and fighter deaths.

The latest toll includes 30 deaths over the previous 24 hours.

Palestinian medical services on Thursday said their teams had transported four dead and 12 wounded after a strike on a house in the Gaza City area in the north of the territory.

'Crisis of trust'

An AFP correspondent reported air strikes and machine gun fire from tanks in Gaza City. To the south, witnesses said there was shelling in the Khan Yunis city and Rafah areas, as well as air strikes in Al-Qarara, near Khan Yunis.

Israel's military said the five bodies recovered from Gaza, including those of two soldiers and two reservists, had been returned to Israel following a rescue operation on Wednesday in Khan Yunis.

After the military warned it would “forcefully operate” in the area, the Gaza health ministry on Monday said an Israeli operation had killed 70 people and wounded more than 200.

The five Israelis recovered had previously been announced as having died, and the military as well as the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said militants had killed them on October 7.

The Forum has regularly protested in Israel for a deal to get the remaining captives home.

On Thursday it demanded an urgent meeting with Israel’s team for negotiating a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, saying a “crisis of trust” had emerged.

“It has now become apparent that the information provided to the hostages’ families did not accurately reflect the situation’s reality,” the group said in a statement.

“This foot-dragging is a deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back. It effectively undermines the negotiations and indicates a serious moral failure.”

Anti-government protesters who have also regularly demonstrated, sometimes by the tens of thousands, have accused Netanyahu of dragging out the war. So have some analysts.

Far-right members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition oppose a truce, which would involve Palestinian prisoners being freed in exchange for the hostages.

After Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, Hamas issued a statement saying the Israeli premier “thwarted all efforts aimed at ending the war and concluding a deal to release the prisoners”, despite Egyptian and Qatari mediation.

Delegation delayed

A senior US administration official said negotiations for a Gaza deal were in the last stretch and Biden would try to close some “final gaps” with Netanyahu.

But a source with knowledge of the talks said separately that the arrival of an Israeli delegation in Doha for talks on Israeli demands for a deal had been postponed from Thursday to next week.

Washington has been increasingly alarmed by the humanitarian toll of the Gaza war, but in his speech to Congress, Netanyahu dismissed “all the lies” about civilian fatalities.

He said “the war in Gaza has one of the lowest ratios of combatants to non-combatant casualties in the history of urban warfare”.

AFP correspondents in Gaza have daily witnessed children and women brought into hospitals injured or dead.

In May, the United Nations said women and children made up at least 56 per cent of those killed during the war, based on a breakdown provided by Gaza’s health ministry at that time.

Washington on Wednesday criticised an Israeli bill that would declare the UN agency for Palestinian refugees — the main aid agency in Gaza — a terrorist organisation.

“UNRWA is not a terrorist organisation,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, urging a halt to the legislation.

HODEIDA, Yemen — Two container ships have docked in Yemen's Hodeida harbour, the first since a deadly Israeli strike hit fuel storage tanks at the rebel-held port, according to Houthi media and ship trackers.

The strikes on Saturday, the first claimed by Israel on Yemen, triggered a massive blaze that burned for days at the dock amid slow firefighting efforts.

It destroyed some cranes and dozens of oil tanks, according to experts. Another tank exploded overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday, reigniting some flames at the harbour, a critical gateway for fuel imports and humanitarian aid into Houthi-held areas.

Despite the ongoing threat, "the port of Hodeida is working normally around the clock" to receive commercial ships, Ahmed Al Murtada, the deputy director of the container terminal, told the Houthi-run Saba news agency on Tuesday.

The port's director of maritime operations, Mohamed Al Sais, told Saba that two ships had docked at the harbour on Tuesday.

He identified them as "Marsa Zenith", a vessel that carried 514 containers of "various goods", and "Brother 1", which was loaded with 22,803 tonnes of iron, Saba said.

Ship tracking website marinetraffic.com confirmed the arrival on Tuesday of Marsa Zenith, identifying it as a Panama-flagged vessel that departed from the port of Djibouti.

It additionally reported the arrival of the Tanzania-flagged Brother 1, which also sailed from Djibouti, according to the website.

The quays of Hodeida were spared major damage in the Israeli strike that rebels say killed nine people and targeted a fuel storage depot owned by the Yemen Petroleum Company as well as a power plant north of the port.

Maritime security firm Ambrey said there were no reports of major damage to vessels in or near the harbour following the strike.

The port, however, is still at risk of another “catastrophe”, said Mwatana for Human Rights, a Yemeni right group which dispatched an assessment team to the dock.

“Based on [the findings of] our field team, the risk of more fuel tanks exploding still remains,” it told AFP in an e-mailed statement.

“Whenever the firefighting teams tried to extinguish the fires, the explosions and flames reignited,” Mwatana said.

“There are major concerns that the teams may not be able to... prevent another explosion.”

WASHINGTON — The United States announced Tuesday that it had invited Sudan's warring sides to hold ceasefire talks in Switzerland next month.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had invited Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to start US-mediated negotiations beginning on August 14.

"The United States remains committed to working with partners to end this devastating war," Blinken said in a statement.

The commander of the RSF, at war with the army for over a year, said he "welcomed" Blinken's invitation and that his side would join the negotiations.

"I declare our participation in the upcoming ceasefire talks on August 14, 2024, in Switzerland," Mohamed Hamdan Daglo wrote on social media site X.

Previous negotiations in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, have failed to put an end to fighting that has displaced millions, sparked warnings of famine and left swaths of the capital Khartoum in ruins.

Subsequent mediation attempts, including by the African Union, have failed to get the warring parties in the same room, as experts said both forces vied for the tactical advantage on the ground.

For more than a year, the brutal war has raged in the northeast African country between the regular military under army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Daglo.

The conflict has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and uprooted more than 10 million people, including 2 million who have fled across borders, according to the United Nations.

“The talks in Switzerland aim to reach a nationwide cessation of violence, enabling humanitarian access to all those in need, and develop a robust monitoring and verification mechanism to ensure implementation of any agreement,” Blinken said.

The US-mediated talks will be co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and will include the African Union, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Nations as observers, the State Department said.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters that “there is no military solution to the conflict in Sudan”.

“Convening these national ceasefire talks and making clear that they are backed by key international stakeholders is the only way to prove to end the conflict,” he said.

Asked about the chances of the talks succeeding, however, Miller acknowledged that “we just want to get the parties back to the table”, calling it “the best shot that we have right now at getting a nationwide cessation of violence”.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes including deliberately targeting civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, and blocking humanitarian aid, while the fighting has caused many humanitarian organisations to cease operations in the country.

A recent UN-backed report said nearly 26 million people, or slightly more than half of the population, were facing high levels of “acute food insecurity”.

Indirect talks between the RSF and Sudanese military, held this month in Geneva by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s personal envoy for Sudan, Ramtane Lamamra, were called an “encouraging” first step by the UN.

The talks focused on humanitarian aid and protecting civilians, though neither side met directly with the other.

JABALIA, Palestinian Territories — On an improvised pitch in war-ravaged Gaza, a young player and goalkeeper block out the boisterous crowd and focus solely on the football as they square off.

The referee blows the whistle and the penalty taker fires the ball into the makeshift goal, sparking wild celebrations as spectators swarm him.

For fans and players, Tuesday's match in the Jabalia refugee camp was a welcome distraction from the pangs of hunger and exhaustion endured over nearly 300 days of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Referee Rami Mustafa Abu Hashish told AFP that football helped "restore a semblance of life" to Jabalia, devastated by Israeli bombardments and fighting which have laid waste to schools, stadiums and homes, and uprooted families many times over.

In the courtyard of a school-turned-shelter, the two sides vied for a trophy one player said was salvaged from the rubble.

The game created a festive atmosphere, with spectators pulling out chairs and leaning over the railings of the three-story compound to cheer.

A group of boys packed onto an empty lorry bed for a better view.

"We will play despite hunger and thirst, we will compete because we love life," read one child's sign in both English and Arabic.

'Something out 

of nothing'

Jabalia was hit particularly hard in an Israeli offensive launched in May, part of a fierce campaign sweeping northern Gaza — an area the military had previously said was out of the control of Hamas militants.

As fighting rages, humanitarian agencies struggle to deliver aid and warn of a looming famine.

Residents have told AFP there is barely any food left in the north, and what little reaches them comes at an astronomical cost.

For the footballers, the match offered a rare escape from concerns about food and water shortages.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 39,145 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

"Since the war on the Gaza Strip, we've stayed away from sports because all the clubs were destroyed, all the playgrounds were destroyed, but today, we made something out of nothing," said Saif Abu Saif, one of the players.

The Gaza education ministry says 85 per cent of educational facilities in the territory are out of service because of the war.

Many have been turned into shelters for war displaced as most of the besieged strip's 2.4 million people have been uprooted multiple times.

Coach Wael Abu Saif said he was determined to attend Tuesday's match despite still experiencing pain from wounds sustained in a February attack. Now in a wheelchair, he said he lost the use of both his legs.

"I've loved football since I was a child, I love tournaments, I love playing," he told AFP.

"I want to prove to the whole world... that we continue to move forward with the most basic of our rights, which is to play football."

TULKAREM, Palestinian Territories — Palestinian officials said an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday killed five people, including a woman and her daughter, while the Israeli military said it "eliminated" a Hamas commander.

The head of the camp committee told AFP that Israeli troops killed five people in the operation.

"A mother and her daughter were martyred and three young men were struck by a drone," Faisal Salamah said.

An activist from the camp, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the toll and told AFP the woman and her daughter were volunteers with the ambulance service.

In a separate statement to AFP, an Israeli military spokeswoman said one of the two women killed was an "armed terrorist" who had appeared alongside militant leaders in the town.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had treated a 30-year-old man for bullet wounds to the abdomen, thigh and hand, and three women for shrapnel wounds, one of them to the eye.

Palestinian official news agency Wafa said more than 25 military vehicles, including bulldozers, stormed the camp, scooping up rubble to block its alleys.

A woman in the camp told AFP that “streets, shops and houses” were all destroyed in the raid. 

“They [the Israeli army] aim at destroying the infrastructure in the camps so they can eventually push people to leave,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.

The town of Tulkarem is known as a hub of Palestinian militant activity and is frequently raided by Israeli troops.

In a separate incident near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli troops killed two people in the town of Sa’ir, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Responding to AFP queries, the Israeli military said its forces carried out an “anti-terrorist operation in the Sa’ir area”. 

“During the operation, a violent riot broke out in which terrorists hurled stones and blocks toward the soldiers, who responded with fire to remove the threat. Hits were identified,” it said.

Since the war in Gaza erupted, violence has soared in the West Bank, with at least 586 Palestinians killed by Israeli settlers or troops, according to the Palestinian authorities.

DUBAI — Yemen's government and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have agreed to halt tit-for-tat banking sanctions as they wrestle for control of the country's financial institutions, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The Houthis have been fighting a Saudi-led coalition since March 2015, months after they seized the capital Sanaa and most of Yemen's population centres, forcing the internationally recognised government south to Aden.

The rebels and the government had in December committed to a UN-led roadmap to end the war, agreeing to work towards "the resumption of an inclusive political process".

But Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping since November and subsequent US and British retaliation have put peace talks on hold.

On Monday, the two sides informed Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy to Yemen, that they "agreed on several measures to de-escalate", said a statement from Grundberg's office, which thanked Saudi Arabia for its "significant role" in brokering the deal.

It came as the warring parties were locked in a fight for control over the country's banks, with both facing a severe financial crunch.

Their latest agreement involves "cancelling all the recent decisions and procedures against banks by both sides and refraining in the future from any similar decisions or procedures", the envoy's office said.

In May, the government-controlled central bank banned transactions with six banks in Houthi-held Sanaa for failing to abide by an order to relocate to Aden.

As a result, currency exchange offices, money transfer agencies and banks in government-held areas could no longer work with those financial institutions. 

The rebels, who run their own central bank and use different bank notes with different exchange rates, said the move was a disguised attempt by the United States and Saudi Arabia to exert financial pressure on the Houthi banking system.

The Houthis retaliated by banning any dealings with 13 banks in Aden, which means those in rebel-held areas could no longer receive remittances through them or withdraw and deposit funds.

 ‘Welcome’ step 

After striking their latest agreement, the warring parties will convene “meetings to discuss all economic and humanitarian issues based on the (UN) roadmap,” said Grundberg’s office.

It stressed “the need for the parties to collaborate towards an economy that benefits all Yemenis and supports the implementation of a nationwide ceasefire and the resumption of an inclusive political process”.

The statement said the warring parties have also agreed to settle disputes over Yemenia, the country’s national airline, which has accused the Houthis of freezing its funds held in Sanaa banks. 

Meetings will be “convened to address the administrative, technical, and financial challenges faced by the company,” the statement said.

Yemenia flights will resume between Sanaa and Jordan, and the number of trips will be raised to three daily, according to the deal. Yemenia will also operate flights to Cairo and India “daily or as needed”, the statement said.

Speaking at the UN Security Council later on Tuesday, Grundberg called the deal, which followed months of negotiations, a “welcome” step but stressed that deeper commitments were needed.

“Stop-gap measures might serve as bandaids but will not provide for sustainable solutions nor will they reasonably pave the way for a nationwide ceasefire and a political process without sustained dialogue,” he said, urging direct negotiations between the warring parties.

Despite the expiry in 2022 of a six-month truce, levels of violence have largely remained low. But “we risk a return to full-scale war,” the UN envoy said.

“Over the past month, we have witnessed an increase in military preparation and reinforcement,” he told the council, adding that clashes have been reported on several frontlines across the country, although they have remained contained.

Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories — The health ministry in Gaza said Monday that an Israeli operation launched in Khan Yunis has killed 70 people and wounded over 200 others, a toll AFP could not immediately verify.

"Due to the Israeli occupation's attacks and massacres in Khan Yunis governorate from the early hours of this morning until now, 70 people have been martyred and more than 200 wounded," the ministry said in a statement. The Israeli military did not offer comment on the toll, when asked by AFP.

Thousands of Gazans fled an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone Monday after the army ordered them to leave and warned of an imminent operation in response to rocket attacks.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on his way to Washington to deliver a crucial speech at what he said was a time of "great political uncertainty", following US President Joe Biden's decision not to seek re-election.

Netanyahu will meet Biden, who has pushed him to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, more than nine months into the Gaza war ignited by the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attacks on Israel.

Fighting raged in Gaza as the Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate part of a humanitarian zone, just two months after directing them there for their own safety.

The military said it issued the order to leave the eastern Khan Yunis sector of the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone as it was "about to forcefully operate" to curb rocket fire.

Facing yet another displacement, Palestinians filled the dusty streets of Khan Yunis with cars, motorbikes, donkey-drawn carts, and on foot, carrying what belongings they could.

Hassan Qudayh said his family fled in "panic".

"We were happily making breakfast for our children, as we had been safe for a month, only to be stunned by shells, warning leaflets and martyrs in the streets," he told AFPTV.

"This is the 14th or 15th time we've been displaced.

"We want peace, not war. We want to be united. Enough! We've been suffering for 10 months."

'Tired and fed up' 

Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,006 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The relentless fighting has plunged Gaza into a severe humanitarian crisis.

Yussef Abu Taimah from Al-Qarara in Khan Yunis said his family went to the humanitarian zone but found no space. 

"Even the sidewalks are full of people and tents. We are tired and fed up. Enough of this displacement and migration".

In scorching summer heat, Palestinians at the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza scoured ruins for water needed for drinking, bathing, and laundry.

For the Shanbari family, water is so precious they try not to spill a single drop.

Exhausted from the constant struggle for basics, the parents say their children are sick.

"All my children have fallen ill -- they're suffering from kidney failure, jaundice, itching, and cough," said Ahmed al-Shanbari. "I don't know what to say, and there aren't even any medicines available."

Nearby, huge sewage puddles, sometimes pond-sized, cover the roads.

Israel on Saturday attacked Yemen for the first time, in retaliation for a deadly drone strike on Tel Aviv by the Iran-backed Huthi rebels.

There were also further exchanges of fire between Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and the Israeli military at the weekend, as tensions remained high along the border.

On Sunday, Netanyahu's office said he was sending a negotiating team for new talks on a truce deal. He said the delegation would leave on Thursday, but it remains unclear where it will go.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been working unsuccessfully for months to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas.

JABALIA, Palestinian Territories — To get his family the water they need for drinking, bathing and laundry, Ahmed al-Shanbari steels himself for a lengthy search through the north of the Gaza Strip.

Shanbari said most of the wells near his makeshift shelter in the Jabalia refugee camp have been destroyed.

And the water distribution network barely works after more than nine months of war that has devastated Gaza's infrastructure.

Water was already scarce before the conflict erupted in October, and most of it was undrinkable. The 2.4 million population relies on an increasingly polluted and depleted aquifer, humanitarian agencies say.

To collect what little of the fetid supply remains can take Shanbari four hours in sweltering heat.

He sets off with his three children, buckets in hand, weaving through mounds of rubble and trash in search of a working spigot or an aid agency hose connected to a water truck.

"We are suffering greatly to obtain water," he told AFP.

Shanbari said the situation has worsened since heavy fighting broke out in Jabalia in May between the Israeli army and Hamas.

"After the last incursion, not a single well remains," he said.

'Exhausted' 

The UN humanitarian office OCHA said most of Gaza's groundwater was contaminated with sewage even before the war. More than 97 percent was unsafe to drink.

Today, many aid groups describe the situation in Gaza as "catastrophic".

For weeks, Palestinians in Gaza have told AFP journalists about the intense thirst that drives them to delirium, their dreams of a cup of tea and the humiliation of being unable to wash.

For the Shanbari family, water is so precious they try not to spill a single drop after finding it.

From the jerrycans they haul home, they carefully transfer the water into basins for cleaning dishes and pitchers for bathing.

The parents say they are "exhausted" by the constant struggle to get the barest of necessities, and their children are sick.

"All my children have fallen ill, they're suffering from kidney failure, jaundice, itching, cough," said Shanbari. "I don't know what to say, and there aren't even medicines available in the north."

Not far from the Shanbari home, huge puddles of sewage, sometimes as big as ponds, cover the roads.

Inoperable 

Even if he could locate a well with water, Shanbari said there is no fuel in the north to run the pumps needed to extract it.

Wastewater treatment plants are also reportedly shutting down because of the lack of fuel and fighting.

An expert on water infrastructure in the Gaza Strip described the territory's water distribution system as effectively inoperable.

Only a ceasefire could get it back up and running again, he said, given the need for spare parts and experts to access the stations and wells.

The Israeli military on Sunday maintained that water collection points were accessible in the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone, to which it has ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move.

But people are afraid to go there after Israeli strikes on Al-Mawasi killed at least 92 people and wounded 300 on July 13, according to the health ministry in the territory.

Israel, UN agencies and the Palestinian Authority have all raised the prospect of resupplying electricity from Israel to a desalination plant and a water treatment plant in Gaza.

But the local electricity distribution company said the line was still too damaged to distribute power.