Israeli forces launch first ground assault in deadly war on Gaza
Updated at 2:10 pm: Israeli naval commandos clashed with
Hamas militants in a raid on the coast of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, in
what appeared to be the first ground assault of a six-day Israeli
offensive on the Palestinian territory which has killed at least 166
people.
With aerial support from fighter jets, the Israeli force attacked a
site in northern Gaza allegedly used to launch long-range rockets, an
Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, said.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas,
confirmed the exchange of gunfire "between our fighters and soldiers of
the Zionist navy which tried to penetrate the zone of Sudaniya" in
northwest Gaza.
Hamas said its fighters had fired at the Israeli force offshore,
preventing them from landing. Lerner said the Palestinian movement
wounded four commandos, but the launch site was hit.
Lerner said the forces had "completed their mission" and that the
results of the raid "would be the first published ground activity" by
naval troops in Gaza, in an offensive that Palestinian officials said
has killed 166 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians.
Saturday was the bloodiest day since the conflict erupted on Tuesday,
claiming 56 Palestinian lives including a two-year-old child and a
73-year-old woman.
Saturday airstrikes included one that hit a center for the disabled,
and another that killed two nephews of Gaza's former Hamas premier,
Ismail Haniyeh.
The strike on the center killed two disabled women and wounded four, the center's director said.
"They didn't understand what was happening and they were so frightened," Jamila Alaywa said of those inside the care home.
"They fired the rocket and it hit us without any warning."
Later on Saturday night, an Israeli strike hit the Tuffah district in
eastern Gaza City, targeting a home and a mosque and killing nearly 20
people, medics said.
The latest attacks on Sunday killed a teenage boy and a woman, medics said.
According to emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra, one strike
on the northern town of Jabaliya struck a house, killing a 14-year-old
boy.
Shortly afterwards, another strike killed a woman in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, he said.
A man was killed in a raid on Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, where the
Israeli army has warned it will sharply escalate its offensive.
Elsewhere, a man injured in an earlier strike died of his wounds, hiking the toll to 166, Qudra said.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been injured.
No Israeli has been killed by Hamas rocket fire, and only three
Israelis have been seriously wounded since the start of the operation,
one them a 16-year-old boy who was injured on Sunday during a strike on
the coastal town of Ashkelon, medics said.
Intensified attacks
Israel says a ground invasion of Gaza remains an option, and it has
already mobilized about 20,000 reservists to do so, but most attacks
have so far been from the air.
Hamas, the leading political movement in Gaza, has fired hundreds of
rockets into Occupied Palestine, striking the deepest inside the
territory ever.
Many of the rockets have been shot down above Israeli towns by Iron
Dome, a partly US-funded interceptor system. Israel rushed an eighth
Iron Dome into service on Saturday to counter stronger-than-expected
rocket fire from Gaza.
The Israeli military claims more than 800 rockets had been launched
since its offensive began on Tuesday. Israel said it has carried out
1,320 attacks on so-called “terror targets.”
The violence shows no signs of abating as the international community
urged on both sides to end the violence. Despite the rising Palestinian
death toll and with no Israelis killed, the UN Security Council
unanimously urged both Israel and Hamas to respect "international
humanitarian laws" and stop the loss of life.
"France calls for an immediate ceasefire," Defense Minister Jean-Yves
Le Drian said in a television interview. "We condemn the Hamas rocket
attacks against Israeli civilians, but we also call on Israel to show
restraint in its response and in particular to respect international law
and to ensure that civilian casualties are avoided."
The chief diplomats of Britain, France, Germany and the United States
are due to discuss how to achieve a truce when they meet in Vienna on
Sunday.
Israeli aircraft carried out a series of attacks in Gaza, including
against a police headquarters and a security compound, Palestinian
officials said.
A woman and a three-year-old girl were killed in the air strikes in
the early hours of Sunday morning, Palestinian officials said.
An Israeli air strike on the home of Gaza's police chief killed 18
people on Saturday, Gaza's health ministry said, in what was the single
deadliest attack of the offensive, while Hamas fired its largest salvo
of rockets yet on Tel Aviv.
A Hamas source said the police chief, Tayseer Al-Batsh, was in
critical condition. All of those killed in the air strike which
television footage showed was reduced to piles of rubble, were members
of Al-Batsh's family.
Qudra said 45 people were wounded and others were still trapped under the rubble where rescue workers were searching.
Meanwhile, three rockets apparently targeting Jerusalem fell short,
hitting Hebron and Bethlehem, the Israeli army and Palestinian security
sources said, with no reports of casualties.
Of four fired at Tel Aviv, three were intercepted above the city and another hit open ground south of it, the army said.
Fire was also exchanged across Israel's northern border.
Rockets fired late on Saturday from Lebanon hit Israel, and Israeli forces said it responded with artillery fire.
"Initial reports indicate that at least two rockets fired from
Lebanon hit open areas north of Nahariya. No damage or injuries, thus
far," an Israeli military statement said.
A Lebanese security source said three rockets had been fired from Lebanon.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket fire from Lebanon, in the second such incident in two days.
There has been little sign that either side is interested in an immediate end to the hostilities, which appear to be ramping up.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said Friday that "no international
pressure will prevent us from striking, with all force, against the
terrorist organization which calls for our destruction."
Haniyeh called on Israel to stop its deadly military campaign on the Gaza Strip.
"(Israel) is the one that started this aggression and it must stop, because we are (simply) defending ourselves."
"The Israelis don't want to let us live"
Thousands of Palestinians were fleeing northern Gaza on Sunday after a
night of intense Israeli strikes and an explicit warning from the
Israeli army that the already intense air raids were set to escalate.
In Beit Lahiya, whole streets were emptying, with residents fleeing
with all the belongings they could carry, by car, by donkey- and
horse-drawn carts, and on foot.
"Last night there was so much shelling that no one could sleep, it
was terrifying," said one man, who gave his name only as Farid.
He was fleeing with six family members, riding alongside them on a motorbike piled high with blankets.
"I'm going to try to go to a school, anywhere that is safe," he told AFP.
Mohammed Sultan packed his family's belongings onto a horse-drawn
cart, with five children sitting among the hastily assembled items.
He walked alongside the cart, with other adult relatives, heading for
a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine refugees (UNRWA).
Earlier on Sunday, the Israeli army said it would drop leaflets over
northern Gaza warning residents to leave their homes "immediately" ahead
of a fresh wave of attacks it said would begin at midday.
But Sultan said he had not received any warning.
"We didn't get any warning, but there was firing all around us all night," he told AFP.
"We were terrified and so afraid for our children," he said. "It was total war."
During the night, Samari al-Atar, who lives in the Atatra
neighborhood - one of the areas Israel said it would hit hard - fled to
an UNRWA school in Gaza City.
"We tried to shelter inside the house but we heard the sounds of
people screaming and when we looked outside there were many people
fleeing their homes," she said.
"It was the middle of the night, and I gathered the children, they
were so afraid," she added, her voice breaking as she started to cry.
"Even as we were fleeing, there was firing all around us... we couldn't take anything with us, the children were barefoot."
Inside the school compound, one boy seemed almost catatonic as he
spoke in a long, monotone about fleeing his home, his eyes downcast and
fixed on the floor.
Maani al-Ataar described the terror of fleeing by night, as Israeli planes circled overhead.
"People were screaming and there were old men who couldn't walk properly, the younger men had to support them," she said.
"There was no electricity, so the road was pitch black."
Robert Turner, director of UNRWA operations said thousands of
displaced people were already sheltering in its schools across Gaza.
"UNRWA now has eight schools sheltering about 4,000 displaced Gazans.
More are arriving by the minute. They are mostly fleeing areas in the
north, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanun," he told reporters.
In Beit Lahiya, Farida Zayed was packing up her belongings and preparing to flee, without knowing where she would go.
"People say they are going to the schools, but Israel has bombed schools before. Even the hospitals have been bombed," she said.
"We've lost everything, our future and the future of our children," she said.
"The Israelis don't want to let us live."
(Reuters, AFP, Al-Akhbar)
Monday, July 14, 2014 10:25 AM
Gazans face psychological toll in face of Israeli attacks
Gazan children face anxiety due to Israeli bombardment. (File photo)
The Israeli regime's ongoing military assault in the Gaza
Strip is exacerbating a mental health crisis in the besieged enclave as
Gazans struggle to sustain coping mechanisms under the constant fear of
death.
Aside from the huge physical death toll -- over 170 have been killed
and at least 1,000 injured since the assault began -- 1.8 million Gazans
live in a state of permanent anxiety as families are unable to find
refuge from airstrikes, drones, and naval bombings in the densely
populated enclave.
Rana Nashashibi, a psychologist with the Palestinian Counseling Center,
told Ma'an that not knowing when, or how, you could die amid widespread
carnage has a deliberate dis-empowering effect on Gazans, part of the
psychological warfare used by the Israeli regime to weaken the
population.
"It is always parallel to the conventional warfare of military power,
using psychological warfare on people. The main aim is to make people
feel helpless and debilitated," Nashashibi said.
The Israeli blockade on Gaza, imposed in 2007, has depleted the
resources and energy of Gazans in facing the severe challenges of
military attacks, she noted.
Adults and children in the Gaza Strip suffer from high levels of
psychological trauma which inevitably increase during periods of intense
violent conflict, medical professionals say.
Following Israel's war on Gaza in Nov. 2012, the incidence of
psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder rose by 100
percent, according to UNRWA.
UNICEF released findings following the 2012 attack which showed a 91
percent increase in sleep disturbances among children, with 85 percent
of adults reporting a loss of appetite.
There was also a notable increase in the incidence of miscarriage among pregnant women, UNRWA said.
Sleep disorders, bed-wetting, anxiety, and psychosomatic symptoms such
as heart problems, high blood pressure, and even cancer, are a result of
living in continuous fear, Nashashibi warned.
NTJ/MB
Gaza death toll rises to 165
Death toll
rises in the Gaza Strip as Israel continues airstrikes.
http://en.alalam.ir/news/1610872
Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip
has announced that 165 Palestinians have been martyred and over 1,000 injured
during the six-day attacks by the Israeli regime.
The
latest airstrike on Sunday killed Layla Hasan al-Udat in al-Maghazi refugee
camp in central Gaza, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said.
Ashraf
Zurub, 21, on Sunday died from wounds sustained a day earlier in airstrikes
while Husam Ibrahim al-Najjar, 14, was killed in Sunday attacks in northern
Gaza.
Earlier,
80-year-old Hijaziyya al-Hilou was killed in the Shujaiyya neighborhood of Gaza
City when an Israeli missile hit the al-Hilou family home. Medics said it was a
miracle the rest of the family survived the attack.
Israeli
warplanes intensified air raids overnight, targeting Hamas buildings in Gaza
City and bombing a Palestinian Authority’s security services base in Rafah.
Three
people, including an unidentified child, died Sunday from wounds sustained
overnight and days earlier.
Late
Saturday, 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Tuffah
neighborhood that hit a house and mosque, al-Qidra said, making it the single
most deadly attack since Israel's assault began.
Another
35 Palestinians were wounded in the same strike, and three more people were
killed in southern Gaza's Rafah that also injured five people, Qidra added.
Among
the wounded was police chief Taysir al-Batsh, officials said.
A
house and mosque were hit as worshipers left Ramadan prayers, locals said.
Israel
said in a statement that it has targeted 1,320 sites in Gaza since the assault
on Gaza began.
On
Sunday, the military distributed leaflets over several locations in northern
Gaza warning residents to stay away from Hamas operatives and sites. The
Israeli military also sent voice-recorded messages and text-messages to Gazans.
NTJ/HH
- See more at: http://en.alalam.ir/news/1610872#sthash.G1UdYfpd.dpuf
Gazans face psychological toll in
face of Israeli attacks
Gazan
children face anxiety due to Israeli bombardment. (File photo)
The
Israeli regime's ongoing military assault in the Gaza Strip is exacerbating a
mental health crisis in the besieged enclave as Gazans struggle to sustain
coping mechanisms under the constant fear of death.
Aside
from the huge physical death toll -- over 170 have been killed and at least
1,000 injured since the assault began -- 1.8 million Gazans live in a state of
permanent anxiety as families are unable to find refuge from airstrikes,
drones, and naval bombings in the densely populated enclave.
Rana
Nashashibi, a psychologist with the Palestinian Counseling Center, told Ma'an
that not knowing when, or how, you could die amid widespread carnage has a
deliberate dis-empowering effect on Gazans, part of the psychological warfare
used by the Israeli regime to weaken the population.
"It
is always parallel to the conventional warfare of military power, using
psychological warfare on people. The main aim is to make people feel helpless
and debilitated," Nashashibi said.
The
Israeli blockade on Gaza, imposed in 2007, has depleted the resources and
energy of Gazans in facing the severe challenges of military attacks, she
noted.
Adults
and children in the Gaza Strip suffer from high levels of psychological trauma
which inevitably increase during periods of intense violent conflict, medical
professionals say.
Following
Israel's war on Gaza in Nov. 2012, the incidence of psychological trauma and
post-traumatic stress disorder rose by 100 percent, according to UNRWA.
UNICEF
released findings following the 2012 attack which showed a 91 percent increase
in sleep disturbances among children, with 85 percent of adults reporting a
loss of appetite.
There
was also a notable increase in the incidence of miscarriage among pregnant
women, UNRWA said.
Sleep
disorders, bed-wetting, anxiety, and psychosomatic symptoms such as heart
problems, high blood pressure, and even cancer, are a result of living in continuous
fear, Nashashibi warned.
NTJ/MB
- See more at:
http://en.alalam.ir/news/1611099#sthash.K3ioRttF.dpuf
|
|
Local Editor | |
http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=160994&cid=23&fromval=1&frid=23&seccatid=14&s1=1 Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem said Sunday the Zionist criminality against the struggling Palestinian people in Gaza "reveals the true danger of Israel to humanity by killing children, women and civilians; destroying houses over their residents; and disrupting the social life in a whole." His eminence pointed out that the ongoing aggression unfold that the Zionist entity is a "crisis-maker and causing wars," adding that it is a hostile entity which is non-viable in our area, but at the expense of killing and displacing innocent people. Sheikh Qassem stressed that "Gaza and Palestine are facing an international Zionist aggression, covered by the U.S. administration by not opposing the Zionist ground assault in the Gaza Strip." He expressed beliefs that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is also covering the aggression "by his strong condemnation of launching rockets from Gaza into Israel, urging Palestinians to stop such unacceptable attacks, while calling on Netanyahu to show restraint only." "The Palestinian people struggling in Gaza is being subjected to a real war, amid shameful official Arab silence and international conspiracy, but the valiant Palestinian resistance - with its honored people - will win just like it won during the two previous wars, and just like the Lebanese resistance won, because it is defending its land and right," Sheikh Qassem said. |
|
|
Local Editor | |
http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?fromval=2&cid=19&frid=21&seccatid=19&eid=160598
Hezbollah
lashed out on Thursday at the Zionist aggression on the Gaza Strip
against innocent civilians that killed so far more than 70 people and
injured dozens.
"This criminal aggression is a continuation of the ongoing Zionist
war on the Palestinian people since before the establishment of the
occupying entity and the seizure of the land and rights," Hezbollah said
in a statement.
"This Israeli war witnesses every time a new escalation to reflect the enemy's criminal spirit that serves its obnoxious settlement projects," the statement read. "It is a shame that all this murder, sabotage and destruction occur amid the silence of the so-called the international community, and amid deeper and more bitter silence of Arab regimes that did nothing in the face of this crime that goes beyond all limits," Hezbollah stressed. The statement pointed out that "the Zionist enemy kills children, women and elders, and destroys homes and institutions in the harshest destruction waged against the Gaza Strip ever since many years ago." Hezbollah salutes the factions of the Palestinian resistance with "best regards" for remaining steadfast and firm in the face of the Zionist killing machine. Stressing that "the enemy could not break the will of the resistance of the oppressed and hero Palestinian people," Hezbollah honored them for their courage, steadfastness and resistance, underlying that "the resistance approach has proved to be the only road that leads to the pride, dignity, victory and retrieval of rights.
Fasis, The Jakarta
Post Hina 'Laa ILAHA ILALLAH' Dengan Simbol Tengkorak
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bangkitlah ummat Islam Indoinesia... semuanya.. dan jangan di nina bobok oleh informasi dusta.. media mainstream yang jahat... kpd ummat Islam Indonesia..
BalasHapusBangunkan jiwa2 kintel dan bodoh yang hanya dengan iming2 hedon..dan dusta2 terselubung kaum penjajah.. yang membodohkan ummat Islam.
Hayyooo bangkit dan berjuang bersama dengan bangsa Plaestina-Hamas dan Gaza..
Stop mengikuti berita hedon dan dusta yang membuat terbuay lemah..
Bangkitlah jiwa2 pejuang Islam.. dan pejuang anak2 bangsa.. yang harus bisa mndiri dan kembali kepada jiwa2 proklamasi 1945...
Bangkitlah Jiwa Islam yang benar .. dalam membela hak2 anak2 bangsa.. dan membela bangsa2 yang terjajah.. oleh kaum serakah..!!!
Allahumma afrigh alaina shabran wastabbit aqdamana wanshurna alalqoumilkafirin...