Palestinian women stand near the damaged site of a drone strike in Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, August 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Five Palestinians were killed in anIsraeli strike on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank on Monday (August 26, 2024), the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said four loud explosions were heard after an Israeli drone targeted a house in the camp in the West Bank city of Tulkarm. Israel has not immediately commented.

Clashes in the occupied West Bank have risen sharply since the start of the Gaza war last year as Israeli forces have stepped up operations against armed militant groups, including Hamas and the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad.

Thousands of Palestinians have been arrested and at least 637 killed, many of them armed fighters but others stone-throwing youths or uninvolved civilians.

Palestine Red Crescent Society evacuates casualties, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, June 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Armenia announced on June 21 its recognition of the State of Palestine, the latest country to do so during the war in Gaza, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Armenia supports a U.N. resolution on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and is in favour of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” the same statement said.

Also read | 145 countries now recognise a Palestinian state

“Based on the above and confirming its commitment to international law, equality of nations, sovereignty and peaceful coexistence, the Republic of Armenia recognises the State of Palestine,” Yerevan said.

Israel’s war in Gaza since the October 7 attack has revived a global push for Palestinians to be given a state of their own.

The other countries who recognised a state of Palestine are Norway, Spain and Ireland, breaking with the long-held view of Western powers that Palestinians can only gain statehood as part of a negotiated peace with Israel.

(With inputs from agencies)

New Delhi:

Over a thousand killed, buildings destroyed and entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble – the war in Israel between security forces and Hamas group operatives has had global implications. 

Many countries, including the US, UK, France and Germany, have heightened security around “potential Jewish targets” and “pro-Palestinian protesters”.

Here’s how the war has impacted security around the world: 

United States

Cities across the country, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Houston, heightened security around synagogues in response to a Palestinian solidarity rally in Manhattan on Sunday. A thousand demonstrators gathered in solidarity with Palestinians, while a few hundred pro-Israel protesters counter-demonstrated.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul denounced the Palestinian solidarity rally as “despicable and morally reprehensible” and directed state landmarks, including the World Trade Center and Niagara Falls, to be illuminated in blue and white – the colours of the Isreli flag. 

United Kingdom

The Scotland Yard has stepped up patrols across London in response to several incidents on social media related to the ongoing conflict in Israel.

The Metropolitan Police condemned the “glorification” of Hamas’s terrorist activities and warned against hate crimes in a statement on Saturday night, following one of the biggest escalations of conflict in the Middle East in decades.

“We are aware of a number of incidents, including those that have been shared on social media, in relation to the ongoing conflict in Israel and the border with Gaza,” the Met Police said in a statement.

“The Met has increased policing patrols across parts of London in order to provide a visible presence and reassurance to our communities. We remain in contact with partners and community leaders to listen to any concerns,” it added.

France

In France, security at synagogues in the cities of Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and Strasbourg had been heightened since late September due to religious holidays.

French authorities ramped up security at Jewish temples and schools across the country, after a Jewish leader warned that the conflict could spill over the country.

France has the largest Jewish population in Europe and the third-largest in the world, with an estimated 500,000 people.French authorities announced that a pro-Palestinian rally scheduled for Monday evening in Lyon would be banned due to the potential for public disorder.

Germany

Germany increased police security at Jewish and Israeli institutions after Palestinian supporters celebrated the attack in the streets of Berlin. The Berlin police shared photos on social media of people celebrating Israel’s attacks with sweet gestures.

German authorities have said they are closely monitoring “potential Hamas supporters” in Islamist circles.

“In Berlin, police protection has been immediately stepped up,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told Bild newspaper. “The federal government and the regions are closely coordinating their actions.”

Canada

Thousands of people in Montreal rallied in support of the Palestinian people on Saturday, holding “free Palestine” posters, waving Palestinian flags, and calling for boycotting Israel.

The Canadian police have stepped up security cover in sensitive areas, especially around synagogues. 

“We are also reaching out to community partners to ensure they know we are here to support them,” an Ottawa Police statement said. “Hate Crimes will not be tolerated and will be fully investigated.”

Middle East 

In Iran, large crowds gathered in major cities, such as Palestine Square in Tehran, waving Palestinian flags and cheering Hamas’s offensive, which they called “Al-Aqsa Flood.” Some billboards in the capital even proclaimed, “The great liberation operation has begun.”

In Lebanon, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite group, held a rally in Beirut to express support for Hamas. During the rally, participants chanted “Death to Israel.” Hezbollah also claimed to have fired on Israeli positions in the contested Shebaa Farms border area.

In Iraq, pro-Palestinian protests erupted, with demonstrators burning Israeli flags and chanting anti-American slogans. The demonstrators stamped on and set fire to Israeli flags chanting “No to America, No to Israel”.

Tel Aviv:

Arik Nani went to a dance party in southern Israel to celebrate his 26th birthday on Friday night but ended up fleeing a massacre as missiles roared overhead and Hamas gunmen shot down people as they tried to escape.

Thousands of young people attended the Nature Party, near Kibbutz Re’im close to Gaza, which became one of the first targets of Palestinian gunmen who crossed into Israel early on Saturday in the biggest attack on the country in decades.

“I heard shots from every direction, they were firing at us from both sides,” he told Reuters. “Everyone was running and didn’t know what to do. It was total chaos.”

As rocket fire exploded around, panicked party goers tried to escape in any way they could.

“At one stage me and a friend got into a car with people we didn’t know and we just jumped into a car with lots of people and started to drive,” said 23 year-old Zohar Maariv. After the car came under fire, they fled on foot and hid for hours until they were rescued. But her boyfriend Matan, who had worked at the party, was still missing.

At least 700 Israelis were killed and dozens more were abducted into Gaza in scenes that have left a profound shock on a country which had long prided itself on its ultra efficient military and security services.

At the Nature Party alone, Israeli media said emergency services collected 260 bodies.

“Only this morning did I understand the scale of what happened, that what had happened was not only at the party, it’s the whole south is on fire,” Maariv said.

After hours of running, Nani and his friend finally reached shelter where he heard horrifying stories from others who had escaped. “People speaking about murder they saw in front of their eyes, someone who saw an entire kidnapped family and a small girl who was murdered,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed an unprecedented response to the assault and Israeli jets have bombarded Gaza continuously, killing more than 400 Palestinians.

For Nani, the feeling of those who had not been able to escape remained.

“There were lots of terrible things along the way, people I wanted to help but couldn’t. People who were left behind, people who needed something,” he said.

“We started texting”

Noa Argamani and her boyfriend Avinatan Or were also at the party but did not make it home.

They are now identified among dozens of Israelis apparently held captive in Gaza after video circulated showing Noa being carried away on the back of a motorcycle, pleading and reaching out towards her boyfriend being marched alongside on foot.

As warning sirens sounded across southern and central Israel when the missiles started flying in the early hours of Saturday, people started trying to contact friends and relatives.

“We started texting everyone,” Amit Parpara, a friend, told Reuters. Other friends at the party managed to escape in their cars, he said but at first it was impossible to get in touch with Noa or Avinatan until he received a text himself.

“She texted me her live location and a message that says ‘I hope someone can come save us,'” he said.

He said he had seen photos of the pair hiding in a hole, waiting for rescue.

Yaakov Argamani, Noa’s father, told Channel 12 television that he had seen the footage of his daughter being driven away on the motorbike and confirmed her identity.

“She was so terrified. I always protected her and in this moment I couldn’t.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Israel battered Gaza on October 8 after suffering its bloodiest attack in decades, when Hamas fighters rampaged through Israeli towns killing 600 and abducting dozens more, as the spiralling violence threatened a major new war in West Asia.

Israeli air strikes hit housing blocks, tunnels, a mosque, and the homes of Hamas officials in Gaza, killing more than 370 people, including 20 children, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “mighty vengeance for this black day”.

In a sign the conflict could spread beyond blockaded Gaza, Israel exchanged artillery and rocket fire with the Lebanon-based Iran-backed Hezbollah militia. In Alexandria, two Israeli tourists were shot dead along with their Egyptian guide.

Gunbattles continue

In southern Israel, Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli security forces 24 hours after a surprise, multi-pronged assault of rocket barrages and bands of gunmen who overran army bases and invaded border towns.

Follow live updates here

“My two little girls, they’re only babies. They’re not even five years old and three years old,” said Yoni Asher, who had seen video of gunmen seizing his wife and two small daughters after she took them to visit her mother, he said.

Israel’s military, which faces questions over its failure to prevent the attack, said it had regained control of most infiltration points along security barriers, killed hundreds of attackers and taken dozens more prisoner.

“We’re going to be attacking Hamas severely and this is going to be a long, long haul,” an Israeli military spokesperson told reporters. The military said that it had deployed tens of thousands of soldiers around Gaza, a narrow strip that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, and was starting to evacuate all Israelis living around the frontier of the territory.

Shelling in Gaza

“This is my fifth war. The war should stop. I don’t want to keep feeling this,” said Qassab al-Attar, a Palestinian wheelchair user in Gaza whose brothers carried him to shelter when Israeli forces shelled their house.

More than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza have sought refuge in schools run by the United Nations, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency said.

The attack by Hamas, launched at dawn on Saturday, represented the biggest and deadliest incursion into Israel since Egypt and Syria launched a sudden assault in an effort to reclaim lost territory in the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago.

At least 600 people have been killed, according to reports by Israeli TV stations. Israel has not released an official toll.

The conflict could undermine U.S.-backed moves towards normalising relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia – a security realignment that could threaten Palestinian hopes of self determination and hem in Hamas’ main backer, Iran.

Tehran’s other main regional ally, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, fought a war with Israel in 2006 and said that its “guns and rockets” stand with Hamas. “We recommend Hezbollah not to come into this and I don’t think they will,” Israel’s army spokesperson said.

Israeli hostages

The debris from Saturday’s attack still lay around southern Israeli towns and border communities on Sunday morning and Israelis were reeling from the sight of bloodied bodies lying on suburban streets, in cars and in their homes.

Palestinian fighters escaped back into Gaza with dozens of hostages, including both soldiers and civilians. Hamas said it would issue a statement later on Sunday saying how many captives it had seized.

About 30 missing Israelis attending a dance party that was targeted during Saturday’s attack emerged from hiding on Sunday, Israeli media reported.

The capture of so many Israelis, some filmed being pulled through security checkpoints or driven, bleeding, into Gaza, adds another layer of complication for Netanyahu after previous episodes when hostages were exchanged for many Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas fired more rocket salvoes into Israel on Sunday, with air raid sirens sounding across the south, and the Israeli military said it would combine an evacuation of border areas with a search for more gunmen.

Retaliatory strikes

Israeli air strikes on Gaza began soon after the Hamas attack and continued overnight and into Sunday, destroying the group’s offices and training camps, but also houses and other buildings.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 370 people had been killed and 2,200 wounded in the retaliatory strikes.

In Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, people searched through the remains of a mosque early on Sunday. “We ended the night prayers and suddenly the mosque was bombed. They terrorised the children, the elderly and women,” said resident Ramez Hneideq.

The escalation comes against a backdrop of surging violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where a Palestinian authority exercises limited self-rule, opposed by Hamas that wants Israel destroyed.

Conditions in the West Bank have worsened under Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-right government with more Israeli raids and assaults by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages, and the Palestinian Authority called for an emergency Arab League meeting.

Stalled peacemaking

Peacemaking has been stalled for years and Israeli politics have been convulsed this year by internal wrangles over Mr. Netanyahu’s plans to overhaul the judiciary.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the assault that began in Gaza would spread to the West Bank and Jerusalem. Gazans have lived under an Israeli-led blockade for 16 years, since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. “How many times have we warned you that the Palestinian people have been living in refugee camps for 75 years, and you refuse to recognise the rights of our people?” he said.

Western countries, led by the United States, denounced the attack. U.S. President Joe Biden issued a blunt warning to Iran and other countries: “This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks.

Across West Asia, there were demonstrations in support of Hamas, while Iran and Hezbollah praised the attack.

That Israel was caught completely off guard was lamented as one of the worst intelligence failures in its history, a shock to a nation that boasts of its intensive infiltration and monitoring of militants.

The main Tel Aviv Stock Exchange indices fell 6% on Sunday and investors expected the violence to prompt a move into gold and other safe-haven assets.

New Delhi:

As gun battles raged between Israeli security forces and hundreds of Hamas group fighters in at least 22 locations, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant today issued a threat to “change the face of reality” in Gaza. 

Over 200 Israelis and 232 Palestinians were killed on Saturday in the deadliest escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades, after the Hamas group launched a massive rocket barrage and ground, air, and sea offensive, prompting Israel to respond with intense airstrikes.

“Today, we have seen the face of evil. Hamas launched a criminal attack, without distinguishing between women, children and the elderly. It will realise very quickly that it made a grave mistake. We will change the face of reality in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said in a video statement.

היום, ראינו את פני הרוע.

החמאס פתח בהתקפה נפשעת, ללא הבחנה בין נשים, ילדים וקשישים. הוא יבין מהר מאוד שעשה טעות חמורה.

אנחנו נשנה את פני המציאות ברצועת עזה עשרות שנים קדימה.

אזרחי ישראל, במיוחד בשעות קשות אלו, התאזרו בסבלנות וגבו את כוחות הביטחון. pic.twitter.com/psu4BOJg3w

— יואב גלנט – Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) October 7, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to demolish Hamas strongholds in Gaza, reducing them to rubble, as the conflict continued to escalate.

READ |Explained: Israel-Palestine And A History Of Conflict

Rockets pounded Israel from Gaza from 6:30 am on Saturday, following months of growing violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the highest death count in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, in years.

“Israel is now at war,” Prime Minister Netanyahu declared to the shocked nation Saturday morning, in what was the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

“I’m telling the people of Gaza: get out of there now, because we’re about to act everywhere with all our force,” he added. “We’ll strike them to the bitter end and avenge with force this black day they brought on Israel and its people.”

US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his “unwavering” support for the US ally, Israel, as the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Sunday. He also warned against any adversaries of Israel exploiting the situation.

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