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JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Palestinian Mawaheb Marei is mourning a double tragedy, her relatives suffering and dying in Gaza, and the killing of her teenage son, a victim of Israel’s frequent raids in the occupied West Bank.

“I wish I could wrap him in a coat”, Marei told AFP, like she had done every winter to keep her son, Eid, warm.

The 15-year-old was killed on October 25 in an Israeli raid on Jenin refugee camp where the family live in the northern West Bank, said the mother.

“Now, it doesn’t matter if I live or die in the raids.”

Marei said she had also lost six relatives in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, sparked by a deadly attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants on October 7.

The Israeli forces carries out regular raids on the Jenin camp and adjacent city, often triggering gun battles between troops and Palestinian militants.

The army says it is targeting “terrorists” in its raids, but the Palestinian health ministry says many civilians are among the dead.

When Marei heard that her son had been hit, she frantically searched local hospitals, and eventually found him intubated and dying from shrapnel wounds.

“So many innocent children have been killed,” she said.

The camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, was originally built to house Palestinians displaced during the Arab-Israeli war that coincided with Israel’s creation in 1948. It is now home to more than 23,000 people.

AFP correspondents in Jenin saw houses in the camp sprayed with bullets, and children’s clothes lying strewn in the wreckage.

Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank have killed more than 300 Palestinians since the Israeli war on Gaza erupted, Palestinian health officials say. 

Standing in a bombed-out Jenin mosque strewn with shattered tiles, Hani Al-Damaj, an elderly Palestinian who lived next door, said he and his relatives were lucky to escape alive when it was hit.

An Israeli air strike tore through the Al Ansar mosque in October, leaving the lower floors a skeleton. Staircases rise into the sky, leading nowhere. 

 ‘Our future in Israeli hands’ 

The Palestinian health ministry said the strike had killed two men, while the Israeli army said it targeted and killed “terror operatives” who used the mosque’s basement as a command centre.

In Damaj’s bedroom, within touching distance of the mosque, chunks of concrete ripped through the wall, showering the mattress with rubble.

Other camp residents told AFP that some people had been killed in their beds by stray bullets during Israeli operations.

In a multi-day raid earlier this month, Israeli forces killed 11 people and a sick 13-year-old boy died after he had been prevented from reaching hospital, Palestinian health authorities said.

Among the wounded was a 27-year-old woman shot in the chest, said the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

The military said at the time that troops had seized dozens of weapons and dismantled multiple bomb-making laboratories.

Last month, the Israeli army killed 14 people in the deadliest single raid in the West Bank since 2005, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Earlier this month footage showed Israeli soldiers inside another mosque in the camp reciting a Jewish prayer through the loudspeakers, in what the Palestinian presidency called a “shameful desecration”. The army said the soldiers had been taken off duty.

Soldiers were also accused of breaking into the nearby Freedom Theatre, where an AFP correspondent saw a trail of damage.

“What is this kind of behaviour from a soldier?” said the theatre’s artistic director Ahmed Tobasi.

“Our life, our future, our sleeping, our breathing, it’s in Israeli hands.”

TUNIS — Tunisians trickled into polling stations on Sunday in the first elections for a new second chamber of parliament under a constitution pushed through last year by President Kais Saied.

Opponents of Saied argue the election is the latest step in the president's "authoritarian" agenda.

Saied, a former law professor who was elected president in 2019, seized executive powers two years later, sacking the government, dissolving parliament and declaring he would rule by decree.

On Sunday, the nine million strong electorate has been asked to choose more than 2,000 councillors from around 7,000 candidates, according to the Independent High Authority for Elections.

Opponents of Saied had called for a boycott of the election, which they said was "illegal" and had been "imposed".

A feeble turnout had been widely expected. Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (07:00 GMT), and an AFP journalist in the capital Tunis said they remained almost empty by midday.

"I have never seen such a low turnout during elections held in Tunisia since 2011," said an official in charge of one polling station in downtown Tunis, who asked not to be named.

The official was referring to the year in which a revolution overthrew president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali after 24 years in power.

The protests that deposed Ben Ali helped to spark demonstrations and uprisings across the Middle East, a phenomenon later dubbed the Arab Spring.

“I understand the people who are ignoring these elections,” Salah Habib, a 60-year-old who said he cast his ballot simply “to mark [his] presence”, told AFP.

Nadia Majer, a 23-year-old student who opted not to vote, said upon leaving a nearby gym: “I didn’t understand anything about this election, and I don’t want to understand anything”.

More than 260 prominent Tunisian figures had signed a petition against what they called a “useless” election, saying Saied’s government “continues to implement its political project imposed on” people in the country.

They alleged the aim of the election was to “weaken local power, disperse it, and make it another docile instrument in the hands of the executive power”.

Since February, authorities have jailed more than 20 members of the opposition, including the Ennahdha Party leader Rached Ghannouchi and Jawhar Ben Mbarek, the co-founder of the National Salvation Front, among others.

The vote will result in the establishment of local, regional and district councils, allowing for the creation of the second chamber of parliament.

President Saied’s new constitution, which was approved at a referendum in July 2022, established two chambers of parliament, the Assembly of People’s Representatives and a National Council of Regions and Districts.

The assembly, with very limited powers, began its work earlier this year after an election boycotted by the opposition and spurned by voters, with only 11 per cent casting ballots.

The inauguration of the council, the second chamber that voters were asked to elect on Sunday, is scheduled for June 2024.

The council will decide on the state budget and regional development projects, and its members are selected in a complex process of local ballots and drawing of lots.

The electoral authority is scheduled to give preliminary results on December 27. A second round is scheduled for February, with no set date as of now.

BETHLEHEM, Palestinian Territories — Israel on Sunday pressed on with its war on Hamas in Gaza, shifting focus to the besieged territory's south as a spiralling death toll has thrown a pall of gloom over Bethlehem on Christmas Eve.

US President Joe Biden stressed the "critical need" to protect civilians, in a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed Israel would "continue the war until all of its goals have been achieved", according to official statements.

As heavy fighting raged on, the Israeli army said it had struck another 200 targets in the past 24 hours in the narrow Palestinian territory, where it is seeking to defeat Hamas and free hostages.

The army said 153 troops had died in Gaza since it launched its ground invasion on October 27. Ten soldiers were killed in battles on Saturday, one of the deadliest days for the Israeli side.

Israel’s withering military campaign, including massive aerial bombardment, has killed 20,424 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Vast areas of Gaza lie in ruins and its 2.4 million people have endured dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine due to an Israeli siege, alleviated only by the limited arrival of aid trucks.

Eighty per cent of Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN, many fleeing south and now shielding against the winter cold in makeshift tents.

Near the far southern Gaza city of Rafah, Umm Amir Abu Al Awf, 27, suffered wounds to her hand and legs in a strike on her house early Sunday.

“Who won?” she said. “Nothing has been achieved except killing civilians... They keep saying Rafah is safe. It is not safe. Nowhere is safe. Every house has a martyr and injured.”

‘More hatred, less peace’ 

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus indicated that forces were close to gaining control in northern Gaza and that now “we focus our efforts against Hamas in southern Gaza”.

Fighting has raged in the main southern city of Khan Yunis, the birthplace of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and the man Israel holds most responsible for the October 7 attack.

Elsewhere, Palestinian rescuers scrambled again to pull survivors and bodies from the rubble of a destroyed residential building, after a strike hit in the central city of Deir Al Balah.

“I was praying when a huge explosion occurred,” said Yazan Moqbel, a wounded man whose sister was still under the broken concrete. “Rubble fell on us. I didn’t know what happened.”

The head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, urged an end to the suffering in the third month of the war.

“For aid to reach people in need, hostages to be released, more displacement to be avoided and above all stop the appalling loss of lives, a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza is the only way forward,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“War defies logic and humanity, and prepares a future of more hatred and less peace.”

And World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus similarly renewed calls for a ceasefire, saying: “The decimation of the Gaza health system is a tragedy.”

On Friday, the United States allowed the passage of a UN Security Council resolution that effectively called on Israel to allow “immediate, safe and unhindered” deliveries of life-saving aid to Gaza “at scale”.

World powers had wrangled for days over the wording and, at Washington’s insistence, toned down some provisions, including removing a call for a ceasefire.

Separately, a leading member of Islamic Jihad, which has been fighting alongside Hamas, said the group’s chief Ziad Nakhaleh arrived in Cairo for talks on a truce and hostage exchange, after the Hamas chief visited last week.

Muted holiday 

As the war rages on, Christians around the world celebrate Christmas Eve, and festivities are usually held in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem where they believe Jesus was born.

But this year the city is almost deserted, with few worshippers around and no Christmas tree erected, after church leaders decided to forego “any unnecessarily festive” celebrations, in solidarity with Gazans.

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, arrived on Sunday at the Church of the Nativity, clad in the traditional black and white keffiyeh.

“Our heart goes to Gaza, to all people in Gaza but a special attention to our Christian community in Gaza who is suffering,” he said.

“We are here to pray and to ask not only for a ceasefire, a ceasefire is not enough, we have to stop these hostilities and to turn the page because violence generates only violence.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas voiced hope Christmas would mark “a cessation of the Israeli war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, as well as across the occupied Palestinian territories”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Khalil Sayegh lives in the United States and for days he anxiously awaited news of his family who had taken refuge in Gaza churches to escape the Hamas-Israel war.

A few days before Christmas, he learned his father had died due to a lack of medical care, Sayegh said by telephone from Washington DC where he works as a political analyst.

"I was told by a relative... who had learned it from a priest," he said.

The news left him feeling shattered, he said, adding that he has yet to speak with other relatives stuck in Gaza which has been under heavy Israeli bombardment since Hamas' October 7 sudden attacks.

Mobile and Internet services, as well as electricity, have been largely disrupted in the Palestinian territory since the war broke out.

"Days go by without us having any news," said Sayegh, 29.

"We live with fear... not knowing if they are dead or alive, if they have food and water or if they are hungry."

Sayegh's family — his parents, two sisters and a brother — are among the 1.9 million people the United Nations estimates have been displaced in the territory of 2.4 million.

His parents and one sister took shelter at the Catholic Holy Family Church in Gaza City, while his younger brother stayed in Khan Yunis as he needs kidney dialysis.

His other sister fled to the nearby Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church with her husband and two children. While there she gave birth to a third child, a boy named Khader.

"I haven't even seen a picture of him. All I know is that he exists," said Sayegh.

About 7,000 Christians lived in Gaza before Hamas took control of the Palestinian territory in 2007, according to the Gaza authorities. Now they number around 1,000.

The Hamas government says more than 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched air strikes and a ground offensive. Most of the dead are women and children.

The war has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and put out of action most of its hospitals, particularly in the north of the territory, the United Nations says.

Food, medicine, water and fuel are hard to come by.

'Pray for us'

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem reported that on December 16 two Christian women were "murdered" by an Israeli forces sniper inside the same church where Sayegh's family are sheltering.

Pope Francis deplored the deaths, which he said happened in a church complex "where there are no terrorists but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities".

Back in Washington, Gaza-born Sayegh said he has put on hold studies he was undertaking in the field of human rights.

"I just cannot function 100 per cent," he said.

"The only thing that keeps me going is to talk about what is happening and to remember that the people of Gaza have no voice of their own."

Sayegh is not the only person eager for news of loved ones trapped in Gaza.

A Jerusalem-based nun, who declined to be identified, said she is only able to reach two other nuns sheltering at the Holy Family Church every three or four days.

“They say they are well and ask us to pray for them,” she said.

On Monday, they told her that water supplies were cut and that none of the displaced had been able to shower for at least two weeks.

“God be with them. Their situation is miserable.”

Father Ibrahim Nino of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem said the displaced at the church have enough food, water and electricity to last them days and must be frugal.

But regardless of the difficult situation, he said, they will celebrate Christmas mass.

This year, church leaders in Jerusalem and the city council of Bethlehem — home to the Church of the Nativity where Christians believe Christ was born — decided to dampen Christmas celebrations in solidarity with Gazans.

And in a Christmas message, the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem lamented that “hope seems distant and beyond” reach for Gazans caught up in 11-weeks of deadly violence.

“Christmas should be a time of hope and celebration,” said Sayegh. But “it’s really hard to celebrate or feel any joy when Muslims and Christians are being massacred in Gaza and innocent civilians are dying”.

“I still rejoice in the fact that we know God is with us... He feels the pain of people, of all people.”

WASHINGTON/ DUBAI (AFP) — More than 20 countries have joined the US-led coalition to protect Red Sea shipping from attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

The Iran-backed Houthis have repeatedly targeted vessels in the vital shipping lane with strikes they say are in support of Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel is battling militant group Hamas.

"We've had over 20 nations now sign on to participate" in the coalition, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told journalists.

Ryder said the Huthis are "attacking the economic well-being and prosperity of nations around the world", effectively becoming "bandits along the international highway that is the Red Sea".

Coalition forces will “serve as a highway patrol of sorts, patrolling the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to respond to, and assist as necessary, commercial vessels that are transiting this vital international waterway,” he said, calling on the Houthis to cease their attacks.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel began a relentless bombardment of targets in Gaza, alongside a ground invasion, which Gaza’s Hamas government on Wednesday said has killed at least 20,000 people.

Those deaths have provoked widespread anger in the Middle East and provided an impetus for attacks by armed groups in the region, including the Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping.

The United States announced the multinational Red Sea coalition on Monday, while the Houthis warned two days later that they would strike back if attacked.

Meanwhile, a drone strike damaged a ship off the coast of India on Saturday but caused no casualties, two maritime agencies said, with one reporting the merchant vessel was linked to Israel.

The attack caused a fire on board, according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, or UKMTO.

Ambrey, a maritime security firm, said the “Liberia-flagged chemical/products tanker... was Israel-affiliated” and had been on its way from Saudi Arabia to India.

Both agencies said the attack occurred 200 nautical miles southwest of Veraval, India.

The Indian navy said it had responded to a request for assistance.

“An aircraft was dispatched and it reached overhead the vessel and established safety of the involved ship and its crew,” a navy official told AFP.

“An Indian navy warship has also been dispatched so as to provide assistance as required.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike which came amid a flurry of drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on a vital shipping lane in the Red Sea.

Last month, an Israeli-owned cargo ship was hit in a suspected drone attack by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Indian Ocean, according to a US official.

The Malta-flagged vessel managed by an Israeli-affiliated company was reportedly damaged when the unmanned aerial vehicle exploded close to it, according to Ambrey.

The Houthi rebels have launched more than 100 drone and missile attacks, targeting 10 merchant vessels involving more than 35 different countries, according to the Pentagon.

GENEVA — There are no longer any functional hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday, describing "unbearable" scenes of largely abandoned patients begging for food and water.

The UN health agency said it had led missions to two badly damaged hospitals, Al Shifa and Al Ahli, in the north of the Palestinian territory on Wednesday.

"Our staff are running out of words to describe the beyond catastrophic situation facing remaining patients and health workers," said Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory.

His comment came amid increasingly frantic diplomatic efforts to secure a pause in the war that Hamas says has already claimed 20,000 lives in Gaza, 70 per cent of them women and children.

WHO has already described Al Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza which last month was the focus of an extended Israeli army operation and has been devastated by Israeli bombardments, as “a bloodbath”.

The smaller Al Ahli hospital had since become the only place where surgeries were possible in the north, but its director said it had stopped operating on Tuesday after being stormed by the Israeli forces.

Dying ‘slowly and painfully’

The WHO-led mission revealed that Al Ahli, which just two days ago was “overwhelmed with patients needing emergency care”, was now “a shell of a hospital”, Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.

“There are no operating theatres anymore due to the lack of fuel, power, medical supplies and health workers, including surgeons and other specialists,” he added.

“It has completely stopped functioning.”

Of Gaza’s original 36 hospitals, only nine are now partially functional, all of them in the south.

“There are no functional hospitals left in the north.”

Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes in Gaza since the war erupted.

Asked about the charge, Peeperkorn said “we on our missions have not seen anything of this on the ground”, adding that WHO was “not in a position to assert how any hospital is being used”.

Although Wednesday’s mission had aimed to deliver fuel, he said, the lack of security guarantees had meant they could only deliver medical supplies and medicines.

But that was not enough, he said.

“Without fuel, staff, and other essential needs, medicines won’t make a difference and all patients will die slowly and painfully.”

Al Ahli, he said, still counts around 10 staff striving to provide basic first aid, while around 80 patients are sheltering in a church within the hospital grounds and the orthopaedic section.

 ‘Too late’

Sean Casey, a WHO Emergency Medical Teams coordinator who was on the mission, described “unbelievable conditions”.

At Al Ahli, the team had walked through the courtyard, where bodies wrapped in white plastic sheeting piled up, and with automatic gunfire sounding nearby, he told journalists, speaking from Rafah in southern Gaza.

In the church, “We found a really unbearable scene,” Casey said, describing around 30 patients, including young children and some with serious trauma wounds begging, not for care but for water.

“At the moment, it is a place where people are waiting to die.”

He reiterated the increasingly urgent call for a ceasefire to allow sufficient amounts of aid in and also to evacuate more patients from Gaza.

Asked when whether time was running out, he said: “I think it is [already] too late.

“We are dealing with starving adults, children... Everywhere we go, people are asking us for food,” he said.

“Even in the hospitals, ...people with open, bleeding fractures, they ask for food.

“If that is not an indicator of the desperation, I don’t know what is.”

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Israel has ordered more evacuations in southern Gaza's main city as diplomats pressed on with efforts to secure a pause in the war that Hamas says has claimed 20,000 lives.

The United Nations said Israel had issued evacuation orders on Wednesday for large areas of Khan Yunis, where more than 140,000 displaced people were sheltering.

Israel told civilians to leave the north of the besieged Palestinian territory at the beginning of the conflict, urging them to seek safety in southern areas.

But as places for people to go continued to shrink, international outrage has mounted over the rising death toll.

The Hamas government's media office in the Gaza Strip said on Wednesday at least 20,000 people had been killed in the Palestinian territory since the war with Israel began.

It said 8,000 children and 6,200 women were among the dead.

UN relief chief Martin Griffiths deemed it a "tragic and shameful milestone".

In the southern city of Rafah, where fireballs and smoke rose after explosions on Wednesday, residents expressed hope that truce talks would succeed.

"I wish for a complete ceasefire, and to put an end to the series of death and suffering. It's been more than 75 days," said Kassem Shurrab, 25.

Truce talks

Hopes that Israel and Hamas could be inching towards another truce and hostage release deal have risen this week as the head of the Palestinian fighter group visited Egypt and talks were held in Europe.

Qatar-based Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Egypt on Wednesday for talks with the country’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.

Haniyeh also met Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian but no details were released.

A Hamas official told AFP that “a total ceasefire and a retreat of the Israeli occupation army from the Gaza Strip are a precondition for any serious negotiation” on a hostage-prisoner swap.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there could be no ceasefire in Gaza before the “elimination” of Hamas.

And US President Joe Biden said of a fresh hostage release deal: “There’s no expectation at this point. But we are pushing it.”

Mossad Director David Barnea held a “positive meeting” in Warsaw this week with CIA chief Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a source familiar with the talks told AFP.

Qatar, backed by Egypt and the United States, last month helped broker a first week-long truce that saw 80 Israeli hostages freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Tunnel network

Israel said on Wednesday its forces had uncovered a tunnel network used by Hamas leaders including Yahya Sinwar, the Islamist movement’s Gaza leader.

The military released footage it said showed the “large network” around Gaza City’s Palestine Square linking hideouts and residences.

The occupation army reported close-quarter combat and more than 300 strikes over the past day, while the death toll among its own forces rose to 134 inside Gaza.

An AFPTV live camera on Wednesday filmed two bombs hitting Rafah, where many of the territory’s estimated 1.9 million displaced have fled.

The health ministry in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 12 Palestinians when houses and a mosque in Rafah “were targeted”.

It said later at least 30 more people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit two houses east of Khan Yunis.

Crowds swarmed the rubble, digging with shovels and a backhoe to try to free the victims. One blackened body lay under a blue blanket on the blood-soaked ground.

“Enough, enough of this. We have lost everything and we can’t take it anymore,” Samar Abu Luli, a woman in Rafah, said after Israeli strikes on the city’s Al Shabura neighbourhood.

UN impasse

The UN Security Council was due to try once again on Thursday to pass a resolution calling for a halt in fighting after previous efforts to win Washington’s backing fell short.

Israel has rejected the term “ceasefire”, and the US has used its veto twice to thwart resolutions opposed by Israel since the start of the war.

The United Arab Emirates is sponsoring a draft resolution on the conflict which has already been watered down to secure compromise, according to a draft version seen by AFP.

It calls for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.

International Crisis Group analyst Richard Gowan said: “There is a strong sense that Biden will make the final decision on this.”

Israel, which declared a total siege on Gaza at the start of the war, has since allowed aid trucks through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and, as of this week, its own Kerem Shalom crossing.

The World Food Progamme said Wednesday it had delivered food through Kerem Shalom in a first direct aid convoy from Jordan and warned of the “risk of starvation”.

Hizbollah fighting

The war has sparked fears of regional escalation, with exchanges of fire over the Lebanon border, and missiles from Iran-backed Yemeni rebels disrupting Red Sea shipping.

Israel said on Wednesday it had struck an “operational command centre” used by Iran-backed Hizbollah fighters and fired on fighters heading for the Lebanon-Israel border.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have launched missiles and drones at cargo ships in the Red Sea, warned on Wednesday that they would strike back if attacked by US forces.

The warning came after the United States said it was building up a multinational naval task force to protect vessels transiting the Red Sea from Houthi attacks carried out in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.