Palestine

BUREIJ REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP) — The gray film covering the faces of children rushed to Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza Thursday made it hard to distinguish between the living and the dead.

After two Israeli airstrikes flattened an entire block of apartment buildings in the Bureij refugee camp and damaged two U.N. schools-turned-shelters, rubble-covered Palestinians big and small arrived at a hospital too packed to take them.

QUSRA, West Bank, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Mourning his father and brother, Mohammed Wadi says armed Israeli settlers from outposts overlooking his olive-growing West Bank village no longer aim low when they shoot at Palestinian neighbours. "Now, they shoot to kill," he said.

Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, already at a more than 15-year high this year, surged further after Israel hurtled into a new war in the separate enclave of Gaza in response to Palestinian militant group Hamas unleashing the deadliest day in Israel's history on Oct. 7.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hundreds of foreign passport-holders and dozens of other seriously wounded Palestinians desperate to escape Israel’s bombardment of Gaza crowded around the black metal gate on the Egyptian border Wednesday, hoping to pass through the enclave’s only portal to the outside world for the first time since the war began.

Restless children pressed their faces against the wire mesh as families with backpacks and carry-on suitcases pushed and jostled. The air was thick with apprehension.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in the first 25 days of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. They were hit by airstrikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought they’d be safe in a church.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops advanced toward Gaza City on Thursday, as the Palestinian death toll rose above 9,000. With no end in sight after weeks of heavy fighting, U.S. and Arab mediators intensified efforts to ease Israel’s siege of the Hamas-ruled enclave and called for at least a brief halt to the hostilities in order to aid civilians.

31 October 2023; MEMO: Anadolu, on Tuesday, captured the images of the Orthodox Cultural Centre in Gaza, which was destroyed by the Israeli bombardment in the south of the blockaded enclave, Anadolu Agency reports.

Abdulmunim Al-Abesi, one of the displaced Palestinians who took shelter in the Centre in the Tel Al-Hawa neighbourhood, told Anadolu that some 500 people took shelter there.

01 November 2023; MEMO: The head of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement abroad, Khaled Meshaal, has said that the Israeli occupation authorities have not yet absorbed the shock of 7 October and are confused, afraid of more resistance surprises. Meshaal made his comment to TRT Arabi on Tuesday.

30 October 2023; MEMO: Israeli tanks have withdrawn from Salah Al-Din Street in Gaza City after a brief incursion, the government in the Gaza Strip said on Monday, Anadolu Agency reports.

“There are no Israeli tanks in Salah Al-Din Street and life has returned to normal,” the Government Media Office said in a statement.

Earlier, witnesses told Anadolu that Israeli tanks moved Sunday night from Juhor Ad-Dik town in the eastern Gaza Strip to Salah Al-Din Street, south-east of Gaza City.

31 October 2023; MEMO: The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has responded to the Israeli occupation government’s announcement that a female soldier who was held as a prisoner of war by Al-Qassam Brigades in the Gaza Strip has been freed.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into Gaza on Monday, advancing in tanks and other armored vehicles on the territory’s main city and freeing a soldier held captive by Hamas militants. The Israeli prime minister rejected calls for a cease-fire as airstrikes landed near hospitals where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering beside the wounded.