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Israel Sends Dozens Of Tanks Into Southern Gaza

Published

2 years ago

December 4, 2023

Editor

Israel’s army on Monday sent dozens of tanks into southern Gaza as part of expanded action against Hamas despite global concern over mounting civilian deaths, and as communications was cut across the besieged territory.

Weeks after Israel deployed ground forces in the north of the Gaza Strip, the army has been air-dropping leaflets in parts of the south, telling Palestinians to flee to other areas.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas in retaliation for the militant group’s unprecedented October 7 attacks that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw around 240 hostages taken, according to Israeli authorities.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says nearly 15,900 people have been killed in the territory, about 70 percent of them women and children, during Israel’s relentless air, artillery and naval bombardments alongside its ground campaign.

The toll has sparked global alarm and mass demonstrations.

The Elders, a group of global leaders, accused Israel of “disproportionate” action and called on governments providing military assistance to Israel to rethink their approach.

The group said in a statement Israel’s retaliation “has reached a level of inhumanity towards Palestinians in Gaza that is intolerable”.

“More killing is not the answer. Negotiation is the way to end this conflict,” they said.

Tanks, armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers were seen Monday near the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, which is packed with internally displaced Palestinians, witnesses told AFP.

At the crowded entrance to the city’s Nasser hospital, ambulances and private cars delivered dazed, bloodied and dust-covered survivors.

Hoping to flee the bombardments, others continued to move further south, their belongings piled onto donkey carts, battered vehicles and even camels, but air strikes have followed them right to the southern border.

“People are pleading for advice on where to find safety,” Thomas White, Gaza director for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, wrote on social media. “We have nothing to tell them.”

Amin Abu Hawli, 59, said Israeli vehicles were two kilometres (1.2 miles) inside Gaza in the village of Al-Qarara, while Moaz Mohammed, 34, said Israeli tanks were moving down the strip’s main north-south highway.

The military was trying to cut the road between Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Khan Yunis, “firing bullets and tank shells at cars and people trying to move through the area,” Mohammed said.

The army said it was taking “aggressive” action against “Hamas and other terrorist organisations” in Khan Yunis, warning that the main road in the north and east of the city “constitutes a battlefield”.

Walaa Abu Libda found shelter at Deir al-Balah’s Al-Aqsa hospital but said her four-year-old daughter remained trapped under rubble.

“I don’t know if she is dead or alive,” said Libda, one of an estimated 1.8 million people displaced in Gaza — roughly three-quarters of the population, according to UN figures.

Three more Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes in the northern Gaza Strip, raising the number of troop deaths there to 75, the army said on Monday.

Full-scale fighting resumed Friday after the collapse of a week-long truce brokered by Qatar with support from the United States and Egypt, during which 80 Israeli hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

More than two dozen Thai and other captives were also released from Gaza.

With at least 137 hostages still held in Gaza, according to the Israeli military, Hamas has ruled out more releases until a permanent ceasefire is agreed.

More air strikes also hit northern Gaza where Hamas’s armed wing reported clashes with Israeli tanks.

Rocket salvos were again fired from Gaza towards Israeli territory.

Like an earthquake
In the southern Gazan city of Rafah, resident Abu Jahar al-Hajj said an air strike near his home felt “like an earthquake”.

“Pieces of concrete started falling on us,” he said.

International Committee of the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric, visiting Gaza, described the suffering as “intolerable”.

Conditions worsened further Monday with all mobile and telephone services across Gaza severed “due to the cut-off of main fibre routes from the Israeli side,” the Paltel company said.

Gazans were already short of food, water and other essentials including fuel.

Israel’s ally the United States has asked Israel to let more fuel in, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Monday.

The US intensified calls for the protection of Gaza’s civilians, and Miller voiced guarded praise for Israeli tactics as its campaign expands in the south.

“We’ve seen a much more targeted request for evacuations” than in the earlier campaign in the north, he said.

“So that is an improvement on what’s happened before.”

Israel said that it was not seeking to force Palestinian civilians to permanently leave their homes.

“We have asked civilians to evacuate the battlefield and we have provided a designated humanitarian zone inside the Gaza Strip,” military spokesman Jonathan Conricus said, referring to a tiny coastal area of the territory named Al-Mawasi.

Any suggestion of Palestinian dispersal is highly contentious in the Arab world as the war that led to Israel’s creation 75 years ago gave rise to the exodus or forced displacement of 760,000 Palestinians.

At the United Nations on Monday, Israel and Palestinian representatives traded accusations of “genocide” over the war, both sides demanding an international response.

With fears of a wider regional conflagration, the Israeli army said it had launched artillery strikes in response to cross-border fire from Lebanon and its fighter jets hit targets linked to Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The Israel-occupied West Bank has also seen a surge in violence, with more than 250 Palestinians killed there since the war began, according to Palestinian authorities.

The Palestinian Authority’s health ministry said Monday two more were shot dead in an Israeli raid on the town of Qalqilya, and a third in Qalandia refugee camp, while two were killed near Hebron.

Despite the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial, suspended along with some court activity when the war began, resumed Monday.

He is accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, which he denies.
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Headline

White House Slams Trump’s Nobel Prize Snub

Published

18 minutes ago

October 10, 2025

Editor

The White House lashed out at the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday after it awarded the peace prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and overlooked US President Donald Trump.

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung said on X.

“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will.”

Since returning to the White House for his second term in January, Trump had repeatedly insisted that he deserved the Nobel for his role in resolving numerous conflicts — a claim observers say is broadly exaggerated.

Trump restated his claim on the eve of the peace prize announcement, saying that his brokering of the first phase of a ceasefire in Gaza this week was the eighth war he had ended.

But he added on Thursday: “Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that, I did it because I’ve saved a lot of lives.”

Nobel Prize experts in Oslo had insisted in the run-up to Friday’s announcement that Trump had no chance, noting that his “America First” policies run counter to the ideals of the Peace Prize as laid out in Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will creating the award.

AFP

Headline

Transgender Woman Jailed For Deceiving Man About Gender In UK

Published

23 minutes ago

October 10, 2025

Editor

A British court has sentenced a transgender woman, Ciara Watkin, to 21 months in prison for deceiving a man into sexual activity by falsely claiming to be a biological female.

According to a BBC report on Friday, the victim told Durham Crown Court he would not have consented to the sexual encounter had he known Watkin was biologically male.

The court heard that Watkin, 21, from Thornaby in Stockton-on-Tees, was found guilty of sexual assault after jurors rejected her claim that the man “would have realised” her gender identity.

Recorder Peter Makepeace KC said he was “certain” the victim “fully believed from start to finish” that Watkin was a woman due to her “lies and deception.”

Watkin, who was born male and had used the name Ciara since childhood, had not undergone any medical transition or surgery, the BBC reported.

Both Watkin and the victim were 18 when they met on Snapchat, where she used a female cartoon character as her profile picture. They later met in person, leading to sexual contact. Prosecutor Paul Reid told the court that Watkin even claimed to be menstruating to stop the man from touching her below the waist.

When Watkin later confessed to being biologically male, the man said he was “physically sick” and immediately reported the matter to the police.

“He said he was shocked and upset about being deceived, adding that he felt ashamed, embarrassed, and had been ridiculed online due to Watkin’s actions and deception,” the report stated.

The victim, who described himself as heterosexual, told the court he felt “part of his masculinity was taken away.”

Defence counsel Victoria Lamballe argued that Watkin’s actions were not “predatory or sadistic” but stemmed from “shame and a deep sense of discomfort” with her own body.

She said Watkin, who has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, identified as female from primary school and had endured years of bullying.

“It is hardly surprising that Watkin built up a façade and presented almost as a caricature of herself to mask the inner turmoil she feels at having been born into the wrong body,” Lamballe said, adding that Watkin “simply wanted to be loved.”

However, Recorder Makepeace ruled that the victim was “totally deceived,” saying Watkin had lied to “get away” with her deception and was aware the man would not have consented if he knew her biological sex.

The judge also criticised Watkin’s attitude during the trial, describing her as “flippant, disinterested, and bored,” showing “not a shred of remorse.”

He said, “At the heart of this case was your frustration at wanting sexual experiences with heterosexual males, which, by definition, you needed to deceive to achieve.”

Watkin will serve her sentence in a male prison, where authorities said protective measures would be taken to ensure her safety. She will also remain on the sex offenders register for 10 years and has been issued a lifetime restraining order preventing contact with the victim.

Detective Constable Martin Scotson of Cleveland Police said Watkin “purposely concealed her sex in order for the sexual activity to take place,” adding that he hoped the conviction would allow the victim to “move forward with his life.”

Headline

Burkina Rejects US Deportees, Calls Trump’s Proposal Indecent

Published

3 hours ago

October 10, 2025

Editor

Captain-Ibrahim-Traore
Burkina Faso, ruled by a junta hostile to the West, has refused to take in people kicked out of the United States, in a snub to one of President Donald Trump’s signature migration policies.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, his administration has made deporting people to third countries — often to nations they have no connection to — part of a sweeping immigration crackdown.

In Africa, Eswatini, Ghana, Rwanda and South Sudan have all accepted people expelled from the United States in recent months. But late on Thursday, Burkina Faso’s foreign affairs minister said the west African country had refused Washington’s overtures.

“Naturally, this proposal, which we considered indecent at the time, runs completely contrary to the principle of dignity,” Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore said on national television.

Hours earlier, the US embassy in the capital Ouagadougou announced the suspension of regular services for most visas for people living in Burkina Faso.
Instead, Burkinabe citizens will now have their services handled in Lome, the capital of neighbouring Togo.

“Is this a way to put pressure on us? Is this blackmail? Whatever it is… Burkina Faso is a place of dignity, a destination, not a place of expulsion,” Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore said.

Burkina Faso’s leader, Captain Ibrahim Traore, styles himself as an anti-imperialist Pan-African strongman.

Since seizing power in a coup in September 2022, he has shunned former colonial master France and the wider West, forging closer ties with Russia instead.