Israeli jets bomb Gaza after rocket barrage from strip amid fallout over Arab deals

News Network
September 16, 2020

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Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip have traded strikes with the Israeli military as the signing of contentious normalization treaties between Tel Aviv and two Arab regimes provokes another flare-up in the blockaded territory.

Palestinian Arabic-language Ma’an news agency, citing local sources, reported that Israeli fighter jets and helicopters bombed a training base run by the Hamas resistance movement northwest of Beit Lahiya town early on Wednesday.

Eyewitnesses confirmed that huge explosions were heard in the northern Gaza Strip before the site caught fire.

The sources noted that Israeli warplanes carried out four air raids against the site, while three others were launched by choppers.

Later, Israeli jets targeted another Hamas-run site in an area located between Deir al-Balah city in the central Gaza Strip and Khan Yunis in the southern sector of the Palestinian enclave.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in either attack.

The raids came shortly after Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip fired a barrage of rockets into the Israeli-occupied territories.

Reacting to the news of the fresh flareup, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that the overnight rocket fire was meant to undermine Israel's deals with Arab states.

"They want to prevent peace, they won't. We will hit everyone who tries to harm us, and we will extend a hand of peace to all who reach out to us to make peace," Netanyahu said in a statement

‘A message of resistance’

Following the Israeli warplanes’ latest bombardment of the enclave, Hamas issued a warning to the Tel Aviv regime.

"The occupation (Israel) will pay the price for any aggression against our people or resistance sites and the response will be direct," said the resistance group in a statement.

"We will increase and expand our response to the extent that the occupation persists in its aggression," Hamas added on Wednesday.

The Palestinian rockets triggered sirens in the cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod, potentially sending hundreds of thousands of Israelis rushing to bomb shelters just as Netanyahu was signing agreements at the White House with Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani.

Two people were reportedly injured and several more treated for shock after a rocket slammed into a street in Ashdod, according to Israeli media.

Palestinians, who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, view the US-brokered deals as a betrayal of their cause.

Mohammad al-Hindi, a senior official with the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad resistance movement, said “the Gaza rockets are a message that this great vanity of the United States and Israel will be shattered by the Palestinians and that the final word is for those in the right.”

Hamas also said in a statement that the Palestinian nation “insists on continuing its struggle until it secures the return of all of its rights.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also protested the normalization deals with Israel, stating they will not foster peace in the Middle East as long as the United States and the Israeli regime do not recognize the rights of the Palestinian nation to establish an independent and sovereign state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since June 2007, after Hamas, which has vowed to resist Israeli occupation, won the elections and rose to power in the enclave.

Since imposing the siege, Israel has also waged three wholesale wars against Gaza, killing and wounding thousands of Palestinians in each.

The crippling blockade has caused a sharp decline in the standard of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty in the strip.

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News Network
March 25,2024

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A Palestinian woman has recounted terrifying incidents after Israeli military forces raided al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City last week, saying the occupying regime’s soldiers are raping Palestinian women before killing them.

Jamila Al-Hisi, an eyewitness who was besieged in the medical complex and managed to finally get out, said on Saturday that women have been subjected to rape, starvation, torture, and extrajudicial execution, adding that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is doing nothing.

She went on to say that Israeli troops have “forced 65 families to leave the area around the al-Shifa Medical Complex whilst burning and killing entire families,” noting that they have burned a building where Palestinian civilians were taking shelter.

“We don’t even have water to break our fast, and we don’t know where to go,” Hisi said, stressing that the displaced people in the compound have not found food or water for six days.

She further called on the Red Cross to provide water for the children and the sick who are being forced to drink dirty water and eat rotten food.

Palestinians are being forcibly displaced by Israeli occupation forces from the area surrounding al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, Hisi said, adding, “We are trapped amid continued Israeli shelling.”

The latest development comes as the Israeli military continues to carry out air strikes and artillery shelling in and around the al-Shifa Hospital for the seventh day in a row.

On Monday, heavily armed Israeli forces stormed the al-Shifa hospital using tanks and drones, claiming that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas is using the facility to “conduct and promote terrorist activity.” Later that day, Israel said that “terrorist forces” were firing at Israeli troops.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said at the time that about 3,000 people were inside al-Shifa seeking refuge and that those attempting to leave were being targeted by snipers and fire from helicopters.

Ever since the Israeli military raided the hospital last week, reports have suggested unspeakable atrocities being carried out against the doctors, nurses, and general staff as well as the thousands of displaced people there.

Israelis have admitted to executing 140 people inside al-Shifa, including paramedics, patients and wounded whilst the siege is still ongoing after seven days with mass arrests.

Meanwhile, a group of Palestinian activists have circulated a shocking story about the Israeli soldiers raping a pregnant woman in the al-Shifa hospital, alongside Hisi’s revelation.

Watan-Palestinian activists quoted the husband of a woman who was raped by Israeli forces as saying that “They ordered her to undress and began to beat her… She told the military she was five months pregnant, not to beat her, but they continued to beat her.”

“After hours, they took out all the women except the pregnant woman, and her children… They took her in front of her husband and children and raped her, ordering the men not to close their eyes or they would be shot.”

Israel waged the war on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.

Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 32,226 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured another 74,518 individuals.

Tel Aviv has also imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

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News Network
March 26,2024

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There is no let-up in the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire.”

Israel carried out air raids and artillery strikes on several parts of Gaza on Tuesday, hitting residential buildings and gatherings of displaced people, “killing and wounding hundreds of people”, the Palestinian Information Center said.

Among the victims are 15 people, including four women and children, who were killed in an attack on a house in the neighborhood of Mosbeh, north of Rafah.

Media reports also said that fighting on the ground continued unabated.

That’s while the UN Security Council on Monday adopted a resolution for an “immediate ceasefire” for the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The resolution was put forward by the 10 non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. The US abstained and the 14 other council members all voted in favor of it.

After the vote, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote on social media platform X that failing to implement the resolution “would be unforgivable.”

Palestinian resistance movements have welcomed the resolution, but Israel’s minister for military affairs Yoav Gallant said Israel will not stop its attacks in Gaza. 

“We will operate against Hamas everywhere – including in places where we have not yet been,” Gallant said.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, also said in a post on X that the attacks will continue until all the captives taken by Hamas during its October 7 blitz are released.

Israel unleashed its war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed more than 32,300 Palestinians and injured over 74,000 others.

The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza.

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News Network
March 21,2024

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Mangaluru: A man from Dakshina Kannada was duped of Rs 2.5 lakh after he was promised a Poland visa.

In a complaint, a resident of Belthangady, stated that the accused, Manoj, had promised a job for his son in Poland. 

Between May 22 of last year and March 19, he handed over Rs 2.2 lakh in various phases, citing different reasons.

However, since the accused failed to provide a visa or return the money, a case was registered at the Dharmasthala police station under IPC sections 417 and 420.

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