Gaza Strip - The African Mirror

Oct

2023

Egypt discusses Gaza aid, rejects corridors for civilians, say sources

EGYPT has discussed plans with the United States and others to provide humanitarian aid through its border with Gaza Strip but rejects any move to set up safe corridors for refugees fleeing the enclave, Egyptian security sources said. Gaza, a tiny coastal strip of land wedged between Israel in the north and east and Egypt to the southwest, is home to some 2.3 million people who have been living under a blockade since Palestinian Islamist group Hamas took control there in 2007. Egypt has long restricted the flow of Gazans on to its territory, even during the fiercest conflicts. Cairo,…

Oct

2023

By SAMIA NAKHOUL and LAILA BASSAM

Who is Mohammed Deif, the Hamas commander behind the attack on Israel?

WORLD

ISRAEL calls last week's devastating attack by Hamas its 9/11 moment. The secretive mastermind behind the assault, Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, calls it Al Aqsa Flood. The phrase Israel's most wanted man used in an audio tape broadcast as Hamas fired thousands of rockets out of the Gaza strip on Saturday signalled the attack was payback for Israeli raids at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque. It was in May 2021, after a raid on Islam's third holiest site that enraged the Arab and Muslim world, when Deif began planning the operation that has killed 1,200 people in Israel and wounded more…

Oct

2023

By MAAYAN LUBELL and EMILY ROSE

How an Israeli kibbutz ‘paradise’ turned into hell in Hamas attack

WORLD

A baby's crushed crib lying outside a burnt-out home. Corpses strewn on streets. Body bags lined up on an outdoor basketball court. The stench of death everywhere. Just a few days ago this was the sleepy, scenic kibbutz of Kfar Aza, an Israeli farming community of about 750 people, many of them families with young children. Now it's become a charnel house after Hamas gunmen burst out of the Gaza Strip on Saturday and laid waste to the village. "Mothers, fathers, babies, young families killed in their beds, in the projection room, in the dining room, in their garden," Israeli…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

What’s the Israel-Palestinian conflict about? The origin of wars explained

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THE fighting between Israel and Hamas, which launched a surprise attack on Saturday, is the latest in seven decades of war and conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that has drawn in outside powers and destabilised the wider Middle East. WHAT ARE THE ORIGINS OF THE CONFLICT? The conflict pits Israeli demands for security in what it has long regarded as a hostile region against Palestinian aspirations for a state of their own. Israel's founding father David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the modern State of Israel on May 14, 1948, establishing a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution and seeking a national home…

Oct

2023

By DAN WILLIAMS, NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI and MAAYAN LUBELL

Israel pulverises Gaza after Hamas attack as it collects its dead

WORLD

ISRAELI air strikes hammered Gaza, razing entire districts and filling morgues with dead Palestinians as Israel took revenge for the Hamas assaults that have triggered some of the worst blood-letting in 75 years of conflict. Across the barrier wall enclosing the coastal enclave, Israeli soldiers collected the last of Israel's dead four days after Hamas gunmen rampaged through towns, killing hundreds of people in the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israel's history. Hamas militants holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage had threatened to execute a captive for each home in Gaza hit, but as night fell on Tuesday there was…

Oct

2023

By EMMA FARGE

UN rights chief condemns Israeli ‘siege’ of Gaza, militants’ taking of hostages

WORLD

ISRAELI retaliatory air strikes against the Hamas militant group struck residential buildings and schools across the Gaza Strip, U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Turk said, adding that "sieges" were illegal under international law. Turk also condemned "horrifying mass killings by members of Palestinian armed groups" and said the militants' abduction of hostages was also forbidden under international law. The Israeli military said on Monday it had called up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists and was imposing a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, in a sign it may be planning a ground assault in response to the devastating weekend attacks by Hamas gunmen.…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

Egypt pushing Israel and Hamas to prevent escalation -Egyptian sources

NEWS

EGYPT has been in close contact with Israel and Hamas to try to prevent further escalation in fighting between them and ensure the protection of Israelis taken hostage by Palestinian militants, two Egyptian security sources said. Egypt had urged Israel to exercise restraint and Hamas to hold its captives in good condition to keep open the possibility of de-escalation soon, although successive Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip made mediation difficult, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity. Palestinian fighters took dozens of hostages in an attack launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, including soldiers and…

Oct

2023

By NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI and DAN WILLIAMS

Israel goes on war footing after major Hamas attack

WORLD

THE Israeli military said it had called up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists and was imposing a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, signs it could be planning a ground assault there to defeat Hamas after it launched a humiliating attack. In a further signal of Israel's rapid shift onto a war footing, a cabinet member from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party said it could set up a national unity government joined by opposition leaders within hours. Hamas' armed wing said it fired rockets towards Jerusalem in response to Israel's bombing of civilian homes in Gaza. Four people in an…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

Israel and Palestinian war: What you need to know right now

WORLD

THE Israeli military said it struck hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip overnight and had sent four combat divisions south where it continued to battle the Islamist militants. The death toll from the fighting stands at 1,100. ISRAEL TARGETS GAZA * Fighting between Israeli forces and Islamist group Hamas was ongoing at seven or eight locations near Gaza two days after Hamas gunmen killed 700 Israelis and abducted dozens more in the deadliest raid into Israeli territory since Egypt and Syria's attacks in the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago. Hamas fighters also continued to…

Oct

2023

By MAAYAN LUBELL, NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI and AMMAR AWAD

‘Sea of bodies’ in Israel, scores dead in Gaza as shock Hamas attack unleashes war

WORLD

GUNMEN from the Palestinian group Hamas rampaged through Israeli towns killing and capturing scores of civilians and soldiers in a surprise assault, met by Israel with massive retaliatory air strikes that killed scores in the Gaza Strip. The worst attack on Israel for decades unleashed a war that both sides vowed to escalate. At least 200 Israelis were reported killed and 1,100 wounded by gunbattles raging in more than 20 locations inside Israel. In Gaza, health officials reported more than 230 people killed and 1,600 wounded. "Our enemy will pay a price the type of which it has never known," Prime Minister…