Selasa, 05 Desember 2023

Israeli settler violence brings destruction and fear to West Bank as war rages - BBC

The school in Khirbet Zanuta had been funded by international donors

A few nights ago, the school in Khirbet Zanuta, a small Palestinian village in the hills south of Hebron, was destroyed along with most of the houses, by a bulldozer.

Its tracks lay fresh and undisturbed in the sand when we arrived. The village was empty as its population of about 200 Palestinians left around a month ago, after sustained pressure and threats from armed and aggressive Jewish settlers who live in nearby outposts that are illegal under both Israeli and international law.

A twisted metal sign lies in the rubble of the school in Khirbet Zanuta. In bold black letters it reads "Humanitarian Support to Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer in the West Bank". The sign records the donors who gave money to the project. The European Union was the lead donor and, among a panel of European development agencies, is also the coat of arms of the British royal family over the words British Consulate-General Jerusalem.

Nadav Weiman came with the BBC to the village. He is a former Israeli special forces soldier who is now an activist with Breaking the Silence, a group of former combatants who campaign against Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. Nadav believes that Jewish settlers, the most militant of whom are known by name to local Palestinians, were once again flouting the law with the police and army.

"They're demolishing Palestinian villages, beating up Palestinian farmers, stealing their olives, trying to open a third front, an eastern front against the Palestinians in the West Bank. Why? Because they want the land without Palestinians."

Two Israeli soldiers came to investigate what we were doing. One of them told an Israeli member of the BBC team that he was a traitor for visiting Palestinians. They filmed us but took much less interest in what had happened in Khirbet Zanuta, a few miles down the road.

When I asked the police if they were investigating the flattening of the school and the village, they emailed back that they were waiting for a complaint. In fact, lawyers for Zanuta's Palestinians had petitioned Israel's Supreme Court.

In three days of travelling through the occupied West Bank, Palestinians have said consistently that since the war in Gaza started on 7 October, Jewish settlers are better armed and much more aggressive.

Violent attacks, including fatal shootings of Palestinians by armed Jewish settlers in the West Bank have risen sharply. So many attacks are happening that Israel's closest allies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have condemned violence by extremist settlers and demanded that those guilty of crimes should be prosecuted.

In practice, settlers rarely end up in court and if they do, they can usually expect light sentences.

The settlers are armed and supported by powerful allies in the Israeli government, led by Itamar Ben Gvir, the minister for national security and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister who also has security responsibilities in the West Bank.

Controversially, Mr Smotrich just found more than $100 million for the settlers. Apparently referring to opinion polls saying Palestinians were supporting Hamas, he told The Times of Israel newspaper that "there are two million Nazis in Judea and Samaria, who hate us exactly as do the Nazis of Hamas-ISIS in Gaza". Judea and Samaria is a biblical term for the West Bank.

Members of the Mhilat family, who say settlers attacked them and accused them of stealing goats

The reality of settler attacks was captured in a video taken by Muntassar Mhilat, a young Palestinian man from a family of Bedouins who live in the Judean desert not far from Jericho.

Their family home was invaded by about 20 violent, armed Jewish men. Muntassar filmed them yelling and pointing weapons.

"He was shooting at my uncle, so I ran down there and confronted him. We were pushing each other and screaming, head-to-head. And I was filming him. Then, around 20 settlers came."

The video shows a settler loading his M-16 assault rifle and pointing it at the family. One of the women there, Umm Omar, carrying a month old baby, thought they were about to die.

"They attacked our house, stole our sheep, threatened my kids with guns and threatened me. Then they hit me and my husband's sister. I thought they were going to slaughter us."

No-one was killed. The settlers accused them, falsely the family said, of stealing their goats. The man who pointed a loaded weapon was wearing a police jacket.

A common complaint is that settlers have been drafted into the security forces as reservists since 7 October and are abusing the power and position that come with the uniform and automatic weapons issued by the state.

The family recognised some of the attackers, as they came from an illegal outpost about a mile away. They know there will be a next time and feel sick with worry.

The harassment of Palestinians is also economic and psychological.

South of Hebron Palestinian farmers are ploughing with the donkey because local Jewish settlers have threatened to steal or break their tractor if they use it.

Ahmed Tirawi says he is being stopped from harvesting his olive trees

Almost at the other end of the West Bank, in a village outside Nablus called Burin, Ahmed Tirawi, a farmer looked across the valley at his olive trees, starting to rot because he has been forbidden by the local settlers to pick them.

"If I go up there on the hillside to harvest my olives, it's taking my life in my hands. The settlers make attacks on the farmers here - one bullet and they will kill me."

The olive season is always a time of tension, but this time he said it has been "horrible".

"My feelings are more than anger. I feel humiliated by all of this. I am powerless to protect myself from just one settler. It's such a humiliation to be so alone and unable to protect yourself. The only solution is international law, two states and to protect people from the Israeli occupation."

Settler leader Yehuda Simon has said Palestinians were stopped harvesting olives for security reasons
Oren Rosenfeld

I went to talk to Yehuda Simon, a prominent settler leader at his own outpost, Havat Gilad, near Nablus. He is a lawyer who has represented settlers accused of attacking Palestinians, and he nodded approvingly when I said Palestinian farmers in the area near where he lived were being stopped from harvesting their olives.

"The army came to the conclusion that the Palestinians coming to harvest olives are gathering information in order to carry out an attack like on 7 October."

He dismissed the repeated, documented reports of settlers attacking Palestinians.

"I don't hear about people who kill Palestinians. Okay. If the Palestinian just sits on his balcony and the settlers come and kill him, it's never happened. Okay. And I don't believe that the British and United States and all countries in the world, they are a friend of Israel… even Joe Biden is against Jewish people. He doesn't like Jewish people."

As for the Arabs: "They could stay here with us, but not try to kill us in the beginning."

For more than a century, Arabs and Jews have been fighting over this small piece of land. The war in Gaza hasn't just increased violence in the West Bank. The way it ends, when it ends, will affect whether the next generation can escape this endless conflict.

The sight of families forced out of their homes raises memories of 1948 for Palestinians. By the time Israel won the battle for its independence, more than 700,000 Palestinians had either fled or been expelled from their homes at gunpoint. The new state took their property and never allowed them to go home. Palestinians call the events of 1948 the "Nakba" or catastrophe.

Settler violence and the loss of homes confirm, for Palestinians, their worst fears, that powerful forces in Israel's government and the settler movement want them out and are using the huge crisis surrounding the war in Gaza to make it happen.

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2023-12-06 06:00:02Z
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Suspect James Yoo believed killed in Virginia house explosion - BBC

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A man is presumed dead after his house in a suburb of Washington DC exploded during a standoff with police.

Authorities said James Yoo, 56, was the sole occupant of his unit in a duplex house in Arlington, Virginia.

Officers were called to the house at 16:45 local time (21:45 GMT) on Monday after reports of someone firing a flare gun.

Neighbours were evacuated. When police approached the building, shots were fired, and the house exploded.

Three officers sustained minor injuries, but police said on Tuesday that no neighbours or bystanders were hurt.

Around 10 to 12 homes in the surrounding area were affected by the blast. Police are still investigating what caused the explosion.

Fire officials said the gas supply to the house had been turned off prior to the blast.

The incident began when police say Mr Yoo fired a flare gun more than 30 times from inside his home.

After authorities were called, they got a search warrant for the home.

They first tried to speak to Mr Yoo over the phone and through loudspeakers, but he did not respond.

Arlington County Police Chief Andy Penn said officers then broke down the door to the home and came under suspected gunfire.

"Officers could not locate the source of the suspected gunfire or its intended target," Mr Penn said during a news conference on Tuesday afternoon.

Police used what they described as "non-flammable" chemicals in areas where the suspect was believed to be hiding in an attempt to get him out of the home.

The house blew up shortly afterwards, at around 20:25.

Human remains were found in the wreckage and medical examiners are working to positively identify them as those of the suspect, Mr Penn said.

There is no ongoing threat to the public and no other suspects, police said.

Years of lawsuits

Mr Yoo's social media accounts indicated that he spent years filing legal claims and alleging conspiracies with little evidence to back them up.

He posted videos online of documents from a number of lawsuits that accused people of stalking, threatening and harassing him.

Mr Yoo's claims were consistently thrown out by the courts.

Police are also looking into "concerning social media posts" believed made by Mr Yoo.

Mr Penn said that Arlington Police had not encountered Mr Yoo with the exception of two noise complaints "over the past couple years".

Dave Sundberg, assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office, said that Mr Yoo had contacted the bureau several times over the years making allegations of fraud, but none of the messages resulted in any investigations.

Virginia home explosion from a distance
CBS

The blast shook surrounding buildings, and authorities are assisting several families who could not yet return to their homes.

Videos circulating on social media showed debris and plumes of smoke flying into the air as the house explodes, blasting off the roof of the house and crumbling its walls.

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2023-12-05 21:48:57Z
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Israel-Hamas war live: Israeli military pushes deeper into southern Gaza as UN warns ‘even more hellish scenario’ looms - The Guardian

Israeli tanks, armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers have entered the southern part of the Gaza Strip near Khan Younis, as an Israeli commander claimed the army had almost completed its mission in the north.

Israeli military vehicles were on the southern section of the main north-to-south road in Gaza, “firing bullets and tank shells at cars and people trying to move through the area”, a witness, Moaz Mohammed, told the AFP news agency.

Israel largely captured the northern half of Gaza in November. Since a week-long truce collapsed on Friday they have swiftly pushed deep into the southern half. Hamas ally Islamic Jihad’s armed wing told Reuters its fighters engaged in fierce clashes with Israeli soldiers north and east of Khan Younis, Gaza’s main southern city.

Israeli tanks have driven into Gaza across the border and cut off the main north-south route, residents told Reuters. The Israeli military said the central road out of Khan Younis to the north “constitutes a battlefield” and was now shut.

It’s as the UN expresses fears of what lies ahead for Gaza. Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories said that “an even more hellish scenario” looms in Gaza in which humanitarian aid simply grinds to a halt.

“The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist,” Hastings said. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go.”

At the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres appealed to Israel to avoid further action that would make the already dire humanitarian situation in Hamas-run Gaza worse, and to spare civilians from more suffering.

Associated Press reports that the areas in Khan Younis that Israel has ordered to be evacuated covers about a fifth of of the city.

Before the war, it says, that area was home to 117,000 people, and now it also houses more than 50,000 people displaced from the north. It was not known how many were fleeing.

Israel has issued a map of Gaza divided into small numbered areas, and it is attempting to tell residents to move from specific zones, in a move described by Rohan Talbot, advocacy director at the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians as “akin to a macabre game of Battleships”.

At the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, ambulances brought dozens of wounded people in throughout the night. At one point, a car pulled up and man emerged carrying a young boy in a bloody shirt and whose hand had been blown off.

“Where is the Red Cross? … where is the United Nations?” a woman screamed outside the emergency department. “My children, since 10pm, are still under the rubble.”

People stand at Nasser hospital near the bodies of Palestinians who were killed during Israeli strikes on Ma’an school east of Khan Younis.

Israel’s military has issued its latest situational update in which it describes operating against what it claims are “Hamas strongholds” in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

It writes:

IDF troops are operating in the area of Jabalya, after completing the encirclement of the Jabalya camp. Over the past day, IDF troops operated in Hamas strongholds and destroyed terrorist infrastructure in the area. During the activity, the IDF took control of key military posts from which attacks on IDF troops have been carried out. The troops struck terrorist infrastructure, located weapons and launchers in civilian compounds, and directed aerial forces to strike numerous terrorists.

It also claims in the update to have “struck buildings used by ‘Nukhba’ terrorists for military activity and eliminated other Hamas terrorists” and to have conducted “a targeted raid on a Hamas internal security forces command and control centre in Jabalya where they located observation and control materials, weapons, and maps.”

The claims have not been independently verified.

To date, during Israeli military strikes on the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-led health ministry has said more than 15,000 people have been killed, 70% of which are women and children.

The Israeli campaign in Gaza followed the surprise 7 October Hamas attack inside Israel which killed at least 1,200 people, and during which more than 200 people were seized and taken to be held hostage. Israel believes that Hamas retains more than 130 hostages within the Gaza Strip that were abducted on 7 October.

Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Khan Younis for Al Jazeera, has said Palestinians there faced “a very, very tough night”.

He wrote:

Since early yesterday evening, there has been nonstop heavy artillery shelling, relentless airstrikes, and mass bombardment. The vast majority of residential homes and public facilities – schools, hospitals, medical centres and shops – in the eastern side of Khan Younis, have been completely destroyed.

As ambulances tried to get to the eastern side … where people were stranded and caught under the heavy bombardment, they were shot at and could not evacuate any of the injured or bring out any of those who were killed overnight.

Turkey’s state-run news agency says Turkish intelligence officials have warned their Israeli counterparts of “serious consequences” if they attempt to target members of Hamas on Turkish soil.

The warning, reported by the Anadolu Agency late Monday, came after Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet, said in an audio recording that his organisation was prepared to destroy Hamas “in every place”, including in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar.

Associated Press, citing the Anadolu Agency, quoted unnamed Turkish intelligence officials who said “necessary warnings were made” to Israeli officials who were told their actions would “have serious consequences.”

The agency also quoted the officials as saying that Turkey had prevented “illegal activities” by foreign operatives in the past and that no foreign intelligence agency would be allowed to carry out operations on Turkish territory.

In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.

Dennis Francis, the president of the UN general assembly, has reiterated his call for a ceasefire, saying he is “deeply alarmed and saddened by the resumption of hostilities”.

It’s just past 9am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. Here are some key recent developments:

  • Lynn Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said that “an even more hellish scenario” looms in Gaza in which humanitarian aid simply grinds to a halt. “The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist,” Hastings said. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go.” The United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) gave an update on Monday on aid coming into Gaza. The organisation said that 100 aid trucks carrying humanitarian supplies and 69,000 litres of fuel entered from Egypt into Gaza on Monday. “About the same as the previous day. This is well below the daily average of 170 trucks and 110,000 litres of fuel that had entered during the humanitarian pause implemented between 24 and 30 November.”

  • Israel’s military expanded ground operations deeper into southern Gaza, with dozens of Israeli tanks, armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers entering the Gaza Strip near Khan Younis. Witnesses said Israeli military vehicles were on the southern section of the main north-to-south road in Gaza, “firing bullets and tank shells at cars and people trying to move through the area”. The Israeli military issued fresh orders to Palestinians in about 20 areas of central Gaza to move further south, posting maps online.

  • The Israeli army has denied telling the World Health Organization to empty an aid warehouse in southern Gaza within 24 hours before ground operations in the area render it unusable. The Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, COGAT said on X: “The truth is that we didn’t ask you to evacuate the warehouses and we also made it clear (and in writing) to the relevant UN representatives”. The WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on X on Monday: “Today, WHO received notification from the Israel Defense Forces that we should remove our supplies from our medical warehouse in southern Gaza within 24 hours, as ground operations will put it beyond use … We appeal to Israel to withdraw the order, and take every possible measure to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and humanitarian facilities,” he wrote.

  • The White House said Hamas broke an agreement to release more female hostages, and its refusal to do so was the cause of the collapse of the week-long truce with Israel on Friday. In a briefing at the White House on Monday afternoon, the US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said: “It is that refusal by Hamas that has caused the end of the hostage agreement, and therefore the end of the pause in hostilities.” He it was “too soon” to judge if Israel provided enough notice, or had done enough to inform Palestinian civilians where it would be safe as it moved into southern Gaza, but said the US warned Israel civilians must be protected.

  • Matthew Miller, a US state department spokesperson, said Hamas continued to hold female Israeli hostages because it did not want them to reveal what they experienced in captivity. Hamas fighters committed widespread “gender-based atrocities and sexual violence” during the 7 October attacks according to Israeli police who say they have evidence of more than 1,500 incidents. “The fact [Hamas] continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they continue to hold children hostages … and the reason this pause fell apart, is they don’t want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody,” Miller told a media briefing.

  • Gaza’s health ministry issued new casualty figures, saying that 15,899 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since 7 October. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip, says that 70% of those who have been killed are women and children. It does not distinguish in the figures between civilians and combatants. The number of deaths is probably under-counted, as the collapse of the health system in Gaza has made it difficult for statistics to be gathered, and there are more than 6,000 Palestinians considered missing within the territory.

Here are some of the latest images coming out of Gaza, as Palestinians flee the fighting in Khan Yunis.

Displaced Palestinians who fled from Khan Younis, build shelters in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip
Palestinians flee from Khan Yunis to Rafah after the Israeli army called on people to leave certain areas in the city
More images of Palestinians leaving Khan Younis to Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip

Several thousand people gathered on Parliament Hill in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, on Monday, demonstrating in support of Israel and calling for an end to antisemitic violence.

“It’s so important that diverse parts of our country come together and stand up for the Jewish people … and stand together against hatred of Jews,” Sara Lefton of United Jewish Appeal, one of the groups sponsoring the rally, told Agence France-Presse.

Jewish schools, synagogues and a Jewish community centre have been the target of gunfire and molotov cocktails in Montreal in recent weeks.

Demonstrators holding Israeli flags at a rally in Ottawa, Canada

Israel has changed the threat level for multiple countries as the Israel-Hamas war continues.

Israel’s national security council says in an online statement:

The threat level for many countries in Western Europe (including the UK, France and Germany), South America (including Brazil and Argentina), as well as Australia and Russia, has been raised to level 2, with the recommendation to exercise increased precaution.

The threat level for countries in Africa (including South Africa and Eritrea) and Central Asia (including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan) has been raised to level 3, with the recommendation to reconsider non-essential travel to these countries.

The statement also warns Israeli citizens to stay “away from demonstrations and protests” and to avoid “openly displaying your Israeli and Jewish identities and any relevant symbols and, and staying away from Israeli and Jewish gatherings.”

Israel has been urged by UN and US officials to avoid a repeat of the devastating impact that its operations in northern Gaza had on civilians as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) expanded its ground offensive against Hamas further south to the city of Khan Younis.

Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza (UNRWA), said on Monday the expansion of military operations in southern Gaza was “repeating horrors from past weeks” by displacing people who had already been displaced, overcrowding hospitals and further “strangling the humanitarian operation” due to limited supplies.

The United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) gave an update Monday on aid coming into Gaza. The organisation said that 100 aid trucks carrying humanitarian supplies and 69,000 litres of fuel entered from Egypt into Gaza on Monday. “About the same as the previous day. This is well below the daily average of 170 trucks and 110,000 litres of fuel that had entered during the humanitarian pause implemented between 24 and 30 November.”

Read our full report here for more:

The IDF has said in two posts on Telegram this hour that “Sirens [have] sounded in the city of Be-er Sheva, southern Israel” and “in communities near the Gaza Strip”. The Times of Israel reports the rocket warning sirens were near a kibbutz and an airbase.

The White House said Monday that the US might establish a naval taskforce to escort commercial ships in the Red Sea.

It’s a day after three vessels were struck by missiles fired by Iranian-back Houthis in Yemen.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US has been in active conversations with allies about setting up the escorts though nothing is finalised, describing it as a “natural” response to that sort of incident, Associated Press reports.

On Sunday, ballistic missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck three commercial ships, while a U.S. warship shot down three drones in self-defence during an hours-long assault, the U.S. military said. It marked an escalation in a series of maritime attacks in the Mideast linked to the Israel-Hamas war. Jake Sullivan told reporters:

We are in talks with other countries about a maritime taskforce of sorts involving the ships from partner nations alongside the United States in ensuring safe passage

He noted similar task forces are used to protect commercial shipping elsewhere, including off the coast of Somalia.

Israeli tanks, armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers have entered the southern part of the Gaza Strip near Khan Younis, as an Israeli commander claimed the army had almost completed its mission in the north.

Israeli military vehicles were on the southern section of the main north-to-south road in Gaza, “firing bullets and tank shells at cars and people trying to move through the area”, a witness, Moaz Mohammed, told the AFP news agency.

Israel largely captured the northern half of Gaza in November. Since a week-long truce collapsed on Friday they have swiftly pushed deep into the southern half. Hamas ally Islamic Jihad’s armed wing told Reuters its fighters engaged in fierce clashes with Israeli soldiers north and east of Khan Younis, Gaza’s main southern city.

Israeli tanks have driven into Gaza across the border and cut off the main north-south route, residents told Reuters. The Israeli military said the central road out of Khan Younis to the north “constitutes a battlefield” and was now shut.

It’s as the UN expresses fears of what lies ahead for Gaza. Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories said that “an even more hellish scenario” looms in Gaza in which humanitarian aid simply grinds to a halt.

“The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist,” Hastings said. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go.”

At the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres appealed to Israel to avoid further action that would make the already dire humanitarian situation in Hamas-run Gaza worse, and to spare civilians from more suffering.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. It’s currently 6:49am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. My name is Reged Ahmad and I’ll be with you for the next while.

A UN official has warned that “an even more hellish scenario” looms in Gaza in which humanitarian aid simply grinds to a halt. “The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist,” said Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories.

More on that shortly – but first – here are the other key recent developments.

  • Israel’s military expanded ground operations deeper into southern Gaza, with dozens of Israeli tanks, armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers entering the Gaza Strip near Khan Younis. Witnesses said Israeli military vehicles were on the southern section of the main north-to-south road in Gaza, “firing bullets and tank shells at cars and people trying to move through the area”. Israeli military issued fresh orders to Palestinians in about 20 areas of central Gaza to move farther south, posting maps online.

  • The Israeli army has denied telling the World Health Organization to empty an aid warehouse in southern Gaza within 24 hours before ground operations in the area render it unusable. The Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, COGAT said on X “The truth is that we didn’t ask you to evacuate the warehouses and we also made it clear (and in writing) to the relevant UN representatives”. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Monday: “Today, WHO received notification from the Israel Defense Forces that we should remove our supplies from our medical warehouse in southern Gaza within 24 hours, as ground operations will put it beyond use… We appeal to Israel to withdraw the order, and take every possible measure to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and humanitarian facilities,” he wrote.

  • The White House said Hamas broke an agreement to release more female hostages, and its refusal to do so was the cause of the collapse of the week-long truce with Israel on Friday. In a briefing at the White House on Monday afternoon, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said “it is that refusal by Hamas that has caused the end of the hostage agreement, and therefore the end of the pause in hostilities”. He it was “too soon” to judge if Israel provided enough notice, or done enough to inform Palestinian civilians where it would be safe as it moved into southern Gaza, but said the US warned Israel civilians must be protected.

  • Matthew Miller, a US state department spokesperson, said Hamas continued to hold female Israeli hostages because it did not want them to reveal what they experienced in captivity. Hamas fighters committed widespread “gender-based atrocities and sexual violence” during the 7 October attacks according to Israeli police who say they have evidence of more than 1,500 incidents. “The fact [Hamas] continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they continue to hold children hostages … and the reason this pause fell apart, is they don’t want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody,” Miller told a media briefing.

  • Gaza’s health ministry issued new casualty figures, saying that 15,899 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since 7 October. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip, says that 70% of those who have been killed are women and children. It does not distinguish in the figures between civilians and combatants. The number of deaths is likely under-counted, as the collapse of the health system in Gaza has made it difficult for statistics to be gathered, and there are more than 6,000 Palestinians considered missing within the territory.

  • Telecoms company PalTel said that Gaza is facing a communications blackout, with all telecom services (landline, cellular and internet) in Gaza City and north Gaza Strip lost due to the disconnection of main elements of the network.

  • At least 60 Palestinians were arrested in the occupied West Bank overnight, Al Jazeera reported, with Israeli forces carrying out raids in the cities of Qalqilya, Jericho, Jenin and Tulkarem. At least 30 armoured vehicles were deployed in Jenin following a dawn raid, the broadcaster reported.

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2023-12-05 08:19:00Z
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Cyclone Michaung: Heavy rains in southern India as storm makes landfall - BBC

A man takes shelter under an umbrella in ChennaiGetty Images

Heavy rains and strong winds are battering India's southern Andhra Pradesh state ahead of the expected landfall of a severe cyclonic storm.

Nine people, including a child, have died in Andhra Pradesh and neighbouring Tamil Nadu state in rain-related incidents.

Authorities have evacuated thousands of people from low-lying areas in both states.

Many residential areas are flooded, and videos show cars floating in water.

Cyclone Michaung is expected to make landfall near Bapatla town in Andhra Pradesh with wind speeds between 90-100km/h (55-62mph). The India Meteorological Department has said that the wind speed will reduce as the cyclone dissipates after landfall.

At least 900 people have been evacuated to 21 cyclone shelters in Bapatla, PTI news agency reported. Heavy winds have uprooted trees and flooded bridges in the town, the agency said.

A four-year-old child died in Tirupati district in Andhra Pradesh state after a wall collapsed, local media reports quoted a government official as saying. Eight deaths were reported in Tamil Nadu state, where the storm caused havoc on Tuesday - causes included falling structures and electrocution.

Meteorological officials have issued a red alert in some parts of the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Schools, colleges and many offices are closed in several districts.

Rain and wind warnings are in place in both states as well as Telangana and Odisha, which lie along the Bay of Bengal coast. Officials have asked fishermen along the coast not to go out in the rough seas and warned of serious damage to houses.

Almost 7,000 people were evacuated from coastal districts in Tamil Nadu on Monday as heavy rains and winds hit the state.

Chennai airport, one of the busiest in India, was closed on Monday as its runway was flooded. It resumed operations on Tuesday morning as the cyclone moved northwards and the intensity of the rains reduced.

In and around Chennai - a major electronics and manufacturing hub - factories were closed, including iPhone production facilities, Reuters reported on Monday.

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2023-12-05 08:07:38Z
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Mount Marapi: 13 dead, 10 still missing on Indonesia volcano after eruption - BBC

Marapi volcano Indonesia rescueIndonesia National Search and Rescue Agency

Rescuers have found two more bodies on an Indonesian volcano that erupted over the weekend, bringing the death toll to 13.

The search for 10 other hikers on Mount Marapi resumed on Tuesday after being paused due to safety worries.

Marapi was still erupting as hundreds of rescuers scaled slippery terrain in search of the missing.

The volcano spewed a 3km (9,800ft) ash cloud into the air on Sunday, shrouding surrounding villages in ash.

There were 75 hikers in the area during the eruption, most of whom have been evacuated and received treatment for burns.

Rescuers are taking advantage of windows of relative calm to look for the 10 missing, Syahlul Munal told BBC News Indonesia.

"We are racing against time," he said.

Mr Munal, who is part of the rescue team, said the two bodies retrieved on Tuesday were found in separate locations.

Mount Marapi, which means "Mountain of Fire", is among the most active of Indonesia's 127 volcanoes and is also popular among hikers. Some trails reopened only last June due to ash eruptions from January to February. Marapi's deadliest eruption occurred in 1979, when 60 people died.

Ahmad Rifandi, an official at Marapi's monitoring station, told AFP that he observed five eruptions from midnight until 08:00 local time (01:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

"Marapi is still very much active. We can't see the height of the column because it's covered by the cloud," he told the news agency.

Video footage of Sunday's eruption showed a huge cloud of volcanic ash spread widely across the sky, and cars and roads covered with ash.

On Monday, rescuers took turns carrying the dead and the injured down the mountain's arduous terrain and onto waiting ambulances with blaring sirens.

"Some suffered from burns because it was very hot, and they have been taken to the hospital," West Sumatra Disaster Mitigation Agency head Rudy Rinaldi said.

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One of the hikers, Zhafirah Zahrim Febrina, appealed to her mother for help in a video message from the volcano. The 19-year-old student, whose nickname is Ife, appeared shocked, her face burnt and her hair matted with thick grey ash.

"Mom, help Ife. This is Ife's situation right now," she said.

She was on a hiking trip in Marapi with 18 school friends and is now in hospital receiving treatment.

Her mother, Rani Radelani, told AFP that her daughter underwent "tremendous trauma".

"She is affected psychologically because she saw her burns, and she also had to endure the pain all night," she said.

Marapi is located on Sumatra, the westernmost and third largest of Indonesia's 18,000 islands. It stands 2,891m (9,485ft) high.

The Indonesian archipelago sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.

Additional reporting by Hanna Samosir in Jakarta

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A group of rescue workers carrying a survivor amid foliage, in Agam West Sumatra on 4 December
EPA

Sumatra's Marapi volcano - a dangerous climb

By Frank Gardner

Sumatra's "Gunung Marapi" volcano was deserted when we climbed it as teenage students in the 1980s. Foolishly, a university friend and I declined the offer of a guide from the village at the base of the slope and trekked up alone by a narrow path through the jungle.

The leeches soon found us, crawling into our socks and up our legs. We emerged at around 2,500m to find a world of blackened, twisted trees, scorched by a recent eruption. Clouds of sulphurous gases swirled around the crater and fissures opened up in the rock just metres away, revealing molten rock below.

Only then did we realise just how dangerous this volcano was - but by now it was getting dark, a freezing rain was falling and we couldn't locate the path back down through the jungle, leaving us thrashing through foliage for hours. We sorely regretted not bringing a guide.

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2023-12-05 07:50:29Z
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