Cairo, Oct 18: Saudi Arabia allowed its citizens and residents inside the kingdom to perform prayers in one of the most holy religious sites, Al Haram Mosque (Grand Mosque) in Makkah, for the first time in seven months, state television reported early on Sunday.
Earlier this month Saudi Arabia allowed citizens and residents to perform the Umrah pilgrimage at holiest sites, Makkah and Madinah, after a seven-month pause due to coronavirus concerns.
The Israeli regime is forcibly evacuating Palestinians from the eastern part of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip amid the prospect of its widely-discouraged ground invasion.
“The estimate is around 100,000 people,” an Israeli military spokesman told journalists on Monday when asked how many people were being evacuated.
International organizations, including the United Nations, have repeatedly warned the regime against invading the city, citing its hosting around 1.5 million Palestinian refugees.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a ground assault on Rafah would “put the final nail in the coffin” for humanitarian aid operations in the Gaza Strip.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also said, “Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death,” with an official saying “It could be a slaughter of civilians.”
Multiple aid agencies, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, have likewise warned against a Rafah offensive.
The NRC said such an invasion “would profoundly exacerbate the already catastrophic levels of need and the humanitarian emergency for millions of civilians with nowhere left to go.”
The official alleged Hamas had killed three Israeli forces on Sunday, attacking them from Rafah.
The evacuation order came a sat least 22 people lost their lives in the regime’s airstrikes killed in Rafah earlier on Monday.
Rafah’s evacuation “is part of our plans to dismantle Hamas,” the Israeli spokesman added, referring to the Palestinian resistance movement that has been defending Gaza in the face of the war.
The Palestinians have fled there from the ravages of a war that the regime began waging against Gaza on October 7, following a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.
At least 34,683 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 78,018 others injured so far during the brutal military onslaught.
On Friday, Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’ Political Bureau, said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on carrying out a ground invasion of Rafah was a key stumbling block in negotiations aimed at a truce agreement.
The Israeli premier has said the regime would go ahead with invading the city “with or without” a truce.
Hamas has, however, asserted that the regime has failed to defeat the resistance during the war.
Karwar, May 5: What commenced as a mere exchange of words between spouses swiftly transmuted into a calamitous ordeal, resulting in the heartbreaking loss of their innocent offspring. The heart-wrenching incident unfolded in the serene confines of Halamaddy village in the picturesque expanse of Dandeli, nestled within the idyllic expanse of Uttara Kannada district.
In the throes of a fervent dispute with her spouse, the aggrieved wife, succumbing to an overwhelming surge of emotions, callously propelled their tender six-year-old progeny into the somber depths of a nearby canal, thereafter alerting the local populace to her grievous act.
Promptly apprised of the distressing occurrence by concerned bystanders, the authorities were swiftly summoned to the scene to confront the harrowing aftermath.
Responding to the distress call, the diligent officers of Dandeli rural police swiftly converged upon the site where the innocent child had been cast into the unforgiving waters of the canal, subsequently effecting the retrieval of the child's lifeless form.
Regrettably, it was discerned that a portion of the child's remains had been tragically claimed by the lurking jaws of a predatory crocodile.
A senior UN official says around 800,000 people have been "forced to flee" Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip since the Israeli regime began carrying out ground incursions into the refugee-packed city from various axes.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, made the remarks in a post on X, former Twitter, on Saturday.
"Nearly half of the population of Rafah or 800,000 people are on the road having been forced to flee since the Israeli forces started the military operation in the area on May 6," he said.
The invasion of the city came amid a genocidal war against Gaza by the regime that has so far claimed the lives of more than 35,300 Palestinians.
Around 1.5 million Palestinians had taken refuge in Rafah prior to the incursions, having fled there from the ravages of the war that began following a retaliatory operation against the occupied territories by Gaza’s resistance groups.
The Gazans, who have now left the city, have fled to "the middle areas and [the southern Gaza city of] Khan Younis, including to destroyed buildings," Lazzarini said.
Al-Mawasi, a 14-square-kilometer town on the coast, as well as the central city of Deir el-Balah, were "crammed" with recently displaced people, he added.
"Every time, they are forced to leave behind the few belongings they have ....Every time, they have to start from scratch, all over again."
The Israeli military has, meanwhile, seized the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza, which borders Egypt and serves as the main point of entry for aid supplies, including fuel, into Palestinian territory.
The move came as part of an all-out siege that the regime has been enforcing against the entire Gaza simultaneously with the war.
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