ReportWire

Tag: israeli strike

  • Israeli strikes kill 29 Palestinians, including children, one of highest tolls since ceasefire

    [ad_1]

    Hospitals in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 29 Palestinians Saturday, one of the highest tolls since the October ceasefire aimed at stopping the war.Israeli strikes hit locations throughout Gaza, including lethal ones on an apartment building in Gaza City and a tent camp in Khan Younis, officials at hospitals that received the bodies said. The casualties included two women and six children from two different families. An airstrike also hit a police station in Gaza City, killing at least 14 and wounding others, Shifa Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said.Related video above: The last family in a West Bank Bedouin community is forced out after years of Israeli settler intimidationThe series of strikes came a day before the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt is set to open in Gaza’s southernmost city. All of the territory’s border crossings have been closed throughout almost the entire war. Palestinians see Rafah as a lifeline for the tens of thousands who need treatment outside the territory, where the majority of medical infrastructure has been destroyed.The crossing’s opening, limited at first, marks the first major step in the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. Reopening borders is among the challenging issues on the agenda for the phase now underway, which also include demilitarizing the strip after nearly two decades of Hamas rule and installing a new government to oversee reconstruction. Still, Saturday’s strikes are a reminder that the death toll in Gaza is still rising even as the ceasefire agreement inches forward. Nasser Hospital said the strike on the tent camp caused a fire to break out, killing seven, including a father, his three children and three grandchildren. Meanwhile, Shifa Hospital said the Gaza City apartment building strike killed three children, their aunt and grandmother on Saturday morning, while the strike on the police station killed at least 14 — officers, including four policewomen, and inmates held at the station. The Gazan Interior Ministry said Palestinian civilians were also killed in the strike.Hamas called Saturday’s strikes “a renewed flagrant violation” and urged the United States and other mediating countries to push Israel to stop strikes.Israel’s military, which has struck targets on both sides of the ceasefire’s dividing line, said its attacks since October have been responses to violations of the agreement. It said in a statement that Saturday’s strikes followed what it described as ceasefire violations a day earlier, when the army killed at least four militants emerging from a tunnel in an Israeli-controlled area of Rafah.Gaza’s Health Ministry has recorded 509 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the start of the ceasefire on Oct. 10. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.___Magdy reported from Cairo and Metz from Jerusalem.

    DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip —

    Hospitals in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 29 Palestinians Saturday, one of the highest tolls since the October ceasefire aimed at stopping the war.

    Israeli strikes hit locations throughout Gaza, including lethal ones on an apartment building in Gaza City and a tent camp in Khan Younis, officials at hospitals that received the bodies said. The casualties included two women and six children from two different families. An airstrike also hit a police station in Gaza City, killing at least 14 and wounding others, Shifa Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said.

    Related video above: The last family in a West Bank Bedouin community is forced out after years of Israeli settler intimidation

    The series of strikes came a day before the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt is set to open in Gaza’s southernmost city. All of the territory’s border crossings have been closed throughout almost the entire war. Palestinians see Rafah as a lifeline for the tens of thousands who need treatment outside the territory, where the majority of medical infrastructure has been destroyed.

    Anadolu

    Smoke rises after an airstrike hit a building in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis, Gaza, despite the ceasefire on January 31, 2026. The Israeli army has carried out intense attacks on various areas of the Gaza Strip since the morning.

    The crossing’s opening, limited at first, marks the first major step in the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. Reopening borders is among the challenging issues on the agenda for the phase now underway, which also include demilitarizing the strip after nearly two decades of Hamas rule and installing a new government to oversee reconstruction.

    Still, Saturday’s strikes are a reminder that the death toll in Gaza is still rising even as the ceasefire agreement inches forward.

    Nasser Hospital said the strike on the tent camp caused a fire to break out, killing seven, including a father, his three children and three grandchildren. Meanwhile, Shifa Hospital said the Gaza City apartment building strike killed three children, their aunt and grandmother on Saturday morning, while the strike on the police station killed at least 14 — officers, including four policewomen, and inmates held at the station. The Gazan Interior Ministry said Palestinian civilians were also killed in the strike.

    Hamas called Saturday’s strikes “a renewed flagrant violation” and urged the United States and other mediating countries to push Israel to stop strikes.

    Israel’s military, which has struck targets on both sides of the ceasefire’s dividing line, said its attacks since October have been responses to violations of the agreement. It said in a statement that Saturday’s strikes followed what it described as ceasefire violations a day earlier, when the army killed at least four militants emerging from a tunnel in an Israeli-controlled area of Rafah.

    Gaza’s Health Ministry has recorded 509 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the start of the ceasefire on Oct. 10. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

    ___

    Magdy reported from Cairo and Metz from Jerusalem.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Israel begins ground offensive in Gaza City with thousands of troops

    [ad_1]

    BEIRUT — Israel began a ground offensive into Gaza City, military officials said Tuesday, slow-rolling into the beleaguered city from multiple directions despite international opprobrium and even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents remain within Gaza’s devastated confines.

    Weeks of intense bombardment that all but leveled the Gaza Strip’s largest urban center made way for what Israeli military officials said was the ground maneuver phase of the operation to occupy the city.

    “We are operating in the depths of the territory… Our aim is to deepen the blows to Hamas until its defeat,” said the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, in a video statement said to be from the border with Gaza on Tuesday.

    “All our operations are carried out according to an orderly plan, with the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas before our eyes.”

    Two divisions — comprising tens of thousands of soldiers — began entering the city late Monday from its western flank. Another is supposed to join in the coming days, while two other divisions encircle the city. Some 130,000 reservists are expected to be mobilized, the Israeli military said.

    The Israeli military insists Hamas is using Gaza City as “the central hub” of its military and governing power, according to a briefing from its spokesman, Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin. He added the Palestinian group has turned the city “into the largest human shield in history.”

    “We estimate it will take several months to secure the city and its centers of gravity, and additional months to clear the city fully due to deep and entrenched infrastructure,” Defrin said.

    In a statement later on Tuesday, Hamas characterized Israel’s accusation that it uses human shields as “a blatant attempt at deception.” It added that Israel is “continuing to perpetrate brutal massacres against innocent civilians.”

    Residents reached by messaging apps reported “insane” amounts of bombardment while others said the Israeli military dispatched what they called “booby-trapped robots” — armored personnel carriers filled with explosives repurposed as unmanned drones — into city neighborhoods.

    Military officials quoted in Israeli media say troops are proceeding with caution, with the expectation of some 2,000 Hamas fighters bunkered in the city.

    Running concurrently with its ground offensive, the Israeli warplanes struck Hodeidah, a vital port city in Yemen controlled by Houthi rebels. The Houthis began firing missiles on Israel in 2023 in a bid to pressure the government into a ceasefire with Hamas.

    The Gaza operation went ahead despite widespread condemnation from Israel’s European allies and accusations internationally that it was committing genocide, according to a U.N. commission report released on Tuesday. Israel rejected the commission’s findings.

    Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, wrote on X that Israel’s ground offensive “will mean more death, more destruction & more displacement.” She added the European Commission will present measures on Wednesday aimed at pressuring the Israeli government to change course.

    Germany, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, excoriated the decision to occupy Gaza City. It is “the completely wrong path,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said in a news conference.

    Wadephul appealed to the Israeli government to instead return “to the path of negotiations for a ceasefire and an agreement” on the release of captives held in Gaza.

    In Israel, the decision to launch the offensive — taken by the Cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in August — continues to be a contentious matter that has divided the military leadership and spurred demonstrations against Netanyahu. On Tuesday morning, families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas protested in front of Netanyahu’s house in Jerusalem.

    Despite the pummeling and repeated warnings that the roughly 1 million Gaza City residents should flee south to so-called humanitarian areas, more than two-thirds remain, according to Israeli military estimates. Health authorities in Gaza said more than 100 people have been killed since the offensive began; they added that the few remaining operational hospitals are overcrowded and suffering catastrophic shortages in medications and blood units.

    “We are seeing massive killing of civilians in a way that I do not remember in any conflict since I am Secretary-General,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a news conference. Israel, he said, did not appear “interested in a serious negotiation for a ceasefire and release of hostages” and that it was determined to “go up to the end.”

    Christoph Lockyear, secretary-general of Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, said that even those Gazans who survived the bombardment on their journey to southern Gaza would “find neither safety nor the basics they need to exist.”

    Israeli soldiers work on their tanks and armored personnel carriers at a staging area on the border with the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Tuesday.

    (Leo Correa / Associated Press)

    “What is happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian catastrophe, it is the systematic destruction of a people. MSF is clear: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and doing so with absolute impunity,” he said.

    Many residents also say they cannot afford to go to al-Mawasi encampment, the area south of the enclave designated by the Israeli military as a safe zone, with drivers charging more than $1,000. Even for those who could pay such sums, overcrowding means there’s no shelter to be found or even a space for tents; and Israeli strikes have hit safe zones in the past.

    Nevertheless, news broadcasts on location on the coastal highway south of Gaza City showed a deluge of thousands of vehicles, many straining under haphazardly piled towers of mattresses, plastic chairs, bags of clothing — anything people could save from their homes ahead of what is expected to be the city’s complete destruction.

    Speaking to reporters ahead of his trip to London on Tuesday, President Trump said he “didn’t know too much about” the ground operation, but that Hamas “would have hell to pay” if it used hostages as human shields.

    In a later news conference on Tuesday, Netanyahu said Trump invited him to visit the White House in two weeks’ time.

    Marco Rubio sits opposite Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday.

    (Nathan Howard / Associated Press)

    As Israeli armor advanced into Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was traveling from Tel Aviv to Doha on Tuesday morning, where he hopes to assuage Qatar’s ire over an Israeli strike on the Qatari capital targeting Hamas leaders last week.

    A statement from the office of Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said the meeting with Rubio centered on ways to enhance defense cooperation, along with joint diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire.

    But in a news conference in Doha on Tuesday, Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry, said ceasefire talks would have “no validity… when one party wants to assassinate anybody who is willing to talk on other side.”

    “What kind of talks can be held, about what?” he said.

    “Our focus right now is protecting our sovereignty, and we will not look into other issues until this one is resolved.”

    In response to the strike, Qatar had threatened to suspend its longtime mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel. During a summit of Arabic and Islamic States on Monday held in Doha, its leaders berated Israel and demanded concrete punitive actions. (A collective communique from the summit announced little more than condemnation.)

    Earlier, Rubio said he hoped the government would continue shepherding negotiations.

    “If any country in the world can help mediate it, Qatar is the one,” he said.

    He added Hamas had a “very short window of time in which a deal can happen,” and that the Trump administration’s preference was for a negotiated settlement.

    Demonstrators hold enlarged cardboard cutout photos of hostages still in Gaza.

    Demonstrators in Jerusalem hold photos Tuesday depicting Israeli hostages being held in the Gaza Strip.

    (Mahmoud Illean / Associated Press)

    Hamas dismissed his words in a statement on Tuesday, saying Netanyahu bears “full responsibility” for the hostages’ lives, and that the U.S. used a “policy of deception” to cover up Israeli “war crimes.”

    Israel demands the group hand back all hostages, surrender and disarm. Hamas insists on a ceasefire with negotiations that would lead to an exchange of hostages and Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and Israeli troops’ withdrawing from the Gaza Strip; disarmament would happen when Israel agrees to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

    The war sparked on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — two-thirds of them civilians, Israeli tallies say — and kidnapping 251 others.

    Israel retaliated with a full-on offensive that pulverized wide swaths of the enclave and has so far killed more than 64,000 people, the grand majority of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities and aid groups; the Israeli military’s former chief of staff said in a recent interview more than 200,000 people have been killed or injured — more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population, a figure that aligns with the Palestinian Health Ministry’s estimates.

    [ad_2]

    Nabih Bulos

    Source link

  • Israeli strike in Qatar shakes decades-long U.S. security pact with Gulf states

    [ad_1]

    BEIRUT — For years, Persian Gulf nations staked their defense on one thing above all: A U.S.-supplied security umbrella, paid for with tens of billions of their petrodollars and agreements that allowed the U.S. to dot the Middle East with some of its largest military facilities.

    The thinking was that being users of U.S. weaponry and having a U.S. military presence was a virtual guarantee of protection if enemies came to call.

    That thinking was upended on Tuesday, when Israel, arguably the U.S.’s top ally, dispatched warplanes and hurled 10 missiles at Hamas’ political office compound in the Qatari capital Doha.

    The attack, which targeted the Palestinian group’s senior negotiation team as it was discussing a ceasefire proposal from President Trump, killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer. Hamas denies any of its senior leadership was killed.

    But whether the targeting succeeded is irrelevant to Gulf leaders pondering the effectiveness of decades-old security arrangements with the U.S.

    “The message to the region appears to be, ‘If you think close ties with and major military support for Washington provides protection… think again,’ ” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute.

    “They’re all vulnerable to attack by larger and more powerful neighbors, and they expect a commitment that helping the U.S. militarily comes with a certain degree of protection. It clearly doesn’t,” he said.

    This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC taken on Wednesday shows damage after an Israeli strike targeted a compound that hosted Hamas’ political leadership in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday.

    (Planet Labs PBC via Associated Press)

    Qatari officials were apoplectic after the strike, calling it cowardly and a violation of the country’s sovereignty.

    Especially galling to Qatar — which houses the Al Udeid Air Base, the largest American military installation in the region — is that it allowed Hamas officials to openly live in a well-appointed district of its capital at Washington’s request, just as it had with the Taliban during the group’s negotiations to end America’s war in Afghanistan.

    “Everything about that meeting [with Hamas] is very well known for the Israelis and for the Americans. It’s not something we’re hiding,” said Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.

    “I have no words to express how enraged we are from such an action [by Israel]. This is state terror,” he said.

    Other Gulf leaders — even those harboring lingering reservations about Qatar and its regional policies — presented a united front on Qatar’s behalf.

    Saudi Arabia called the strike a “brutal aggression” and said the kingdom would “stand with Qatar without limit.” Bahrain expressed its “full solidarity.”

    Mohamed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, traveled to Doha the next day to meet the Qatari emir — a surprise given how assiduously the UAE has worked to improve ties with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered agreements that saw a number of Arab and Gulf nations normalize relations with Israel in 2020.

    “The Gulf states view an external attack on one member as an attack on all,” said Yasmine Farouk, the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Project director at the International Crisis Group.

    Farouk added that trust in the U.S. was already diminished in recent years when Washington failed to defend or respond to attacks on Saudi Arabia in 2019 and the UAE in 2022 by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Qatar, which suffered through an Iranian missile assault on Al Udeid in June, now has the dubious honor of having its territory become a proxy battleground for both sides of the larger U.S.-Iran conflict.

    This week’s strike also represents a setback for the anti-Iran coalition the U.S. has worked to forge with its Arab allies and Israel. But the feeling among many in the Gulf is that Israel is just as belligerent and destabilizing an actor as Iran.

    “Israel has misinterpreted the willingness of Gulf countries to normalize relations with it as an acknowledgment of its dominance in the region,” Farouq said.

    “The Gulf states do not want to live in a region dominated by either Israel or Iran,” she added. “They reject that kind of behavior, rather than rejecting a specific country.”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the immediate motive for the strike was Hamas claiming responsibility for the killing of six Israelis by Palestinian gunmen in Jerusalem earlier this week. He insisted the operation was planned and conducted entirely by Israel.

    At the same time, the more than 1,000-mile distance between Israel and Qatar means Israeli warplanes flew over multiple Arab countries, almost all of them with U.S. bases presumably able to detect incoming aircraft. (The U.S. has 19 bases across the region.) The building the Israelis struck is less than 20 miles away from Al Udeid.

    Trump said he learned about the attack shortly before it began and instructed members of his administration to “immediately” inform the Qataris. But Al Thani said the call from the U.S. came 10 minutes after the planes lobbed their missiles on Doha.

    In May, when Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, they feted him with grandiose events heavy on the pomp and circumstance and pledged trillions of dollars for investments in the U.S. The expectation was that this would buy some leverage, but Trump is reported to have done little more than scold Netanyahu over Tuesday’s strike, even while stopping short of condemning his actions. (Also in May, Qatar donated a luxury Boeing 747 aircraft for Trump to use as Air Force One.)

    The conclusion for Gulf countries expecting U.S. protection from all threats, said Abdulaziz Al-Anjeri, founder of the Kuwait-based think tank Reconnaissance Research, is that some threats are more equal than others.

    “U.S. security assistance is effective against Iran or its allied armed factions, but it does not extend to Israel,” he said, adding that historical alliances with the Gulf don’t carry the same weight for Trump as they may have in the past.

    The issue, said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University, is that there’s little specificity as to what a U.S. security umbrella actually entails.

    “America’s No.1 ally is now striking another American partner, and all they got from Trump is that they ‘felt badly.’ That it happened this way is not in America’s favor,” Al-Saif said.

    He added that Gulf nations, especially Saudi Arabia, have been pushing for more formal — and well-defined — defense pacts, but that the relationship with the U.S. needed to reflect recent changes. “You’re here as a security guarantor,” he said of the U.S. “We cannot be cash dispensers if we feel that our basic security is not guaranteed.”

    [ad_2]

    Nabih Bulos

    Source link

  • Israeli strikes on Gaza hospital kill 20 people, including 5 journalists

    [ad_1]

    BEIRUT — Two Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza on Monday killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, four healthcare workers and a civil defense worker, according to Palestinian health authorities, the World Health Organization and video taken from the hospital.

    Coming two weeks after Israeli strikes killed six journalists in the enclave, the attacks add to a tally that has seen Gaza become the deadliest conflict ever recorded for media workers and healthcare personnel, advocacy groups say.

    The strikes targeted the top floor of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, with the first attack coming some time after 10 a.m. Roughly 10 minutes later, as a live broadcast from a local news channel zoomed in on civil defense workers sifting through the wreckage with journalists filming nearby, the second missile hit.

    “The civil defense is gone! They [Israel] killed the people!” shouts a journalist from Al-Ghad TV as the scene is engulfed in smoke and rubble.

    Other video taken inside the medical complex depicts a dust-covered man dragging himself on the floor away from the blast, while a bloodied cameraman is escorted to a nursing station. Hadil Abu Zaid, a British doctor with the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians visiting the intensive care unit, in a statement described the scene as “unbearable,” with “trails of blood” across the floor.

    The Gaza Health Ministry condemned the attacks, characterizing them as “a continuation of the systematic destruction of the health system and the continuation of genocide.”

    In a statement on X, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 50 other people were injured in the attacks, including “critically ill patients who were already receiving care.” He said the hospital’s main building, which houses the emergency department, inpatient ward and surgical unit, was struck.

    “While people in #Gaza are being starved, their already limited access to healthcare is being further crippled by repeated attacks,” he wrote. “We cannot say it loudly enough: STOP attacks on health care. Ceasefire now!”

    Activists in Gaza said journalists often congregated on the upper floor of the hospital and the emergency staircase outside so as to get a phone signal. Five journalists were killed in the attack, Gaza health authorities and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said.

    The latter identified the slain media workers as Mariam Abu Dagga, a visual journalist who freelanced for the Associated Press; Hussam al-Masri, a contractor cameraman with Reuters; Moaz Abu Taha, a freelancer who also worked on occasion with Reuters; Ahmed Abu Aziz, who reported for Middle East Eye; and Al Jazeera cameraman Mohammad Salama.

    Another contract photographer with Reuters, Hatem Khaled, was also injured, the news agency said.

    The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate denounced the journalists’ killing, saying in a statement that “without a doubt [Israel] is waging war on free media.”

    The Israeli military confirmed in a statement that it carried out the strike and that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such,” and that it would conduct an “initial inquiry.”

    Later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement describing the attack as a “tragic mishap.”

    “The military authorities are conducting a thorough investigation,” he said.

    “Our war is with Hamas terrorists.”

    Rights groups accused Israel of conducting a so-called double-tap strike, where a second strike follows several minutes after the first. During that pause, rescue workers and medical personnel will assemble. A July investigation by the Israeli news outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call found that double-tap strikes had been adopted by the Israeli military as standard procedure when operating in Gaza.

    Monday’s strikes come amid growing international criticism of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which over the last 22 months has led to the deaths of hundreds of healthcare personnel and media workers, and carried out routine attacks on healthcare facilities and infrastructure.

    Israel insists that Hamas militants are hiding inside or near healthcare facilities, or that the group’s cadres disguise themselves as medical personnel, civil defense crews and journalists. It has rarely provided evidence proving those accusations.

    In June, a group of civil society organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders and others said more than 1,500 health workers and 460 aid workers have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping about 250 others, most of them civilians. Health authorities in Gaza put the Palestinian death toll at nearly 63,000, the majority of them civilians.

    Israel has barred international journalists from entering Gaza, except on tightly controlled tours with its military. Meanwhile, it routinely vilifies local reporters as Hamas apologists or operatives. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a tally published before Monday’s attacks that at least 192 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began. Health authorities in Gaza put the toll at 244.

    [ad_2]

    Nabih Bulos

    Source link

  • Pro-Palestinian protesters shut down 101 Freeway in downtown L.A.

    Pro-Palestinian protesters shut down 101 Freeway in downtown L.A.

    [ad_1]

    Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters briefly shutdown the 101 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles on Monday afternoon.

    The protesters blocked traffic as they held Palestinian flags and signs reading “Stop the Genocide” and “End the Occupation Now!” and chanted “Eyes on Rafah!” according to video posted to social media, including by journalist Ben Camacho.

    The protest came a day after what appeared to be one of the deadliest attacks in Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas.

    On Sunday, an Israeli strike on a tent camp housing displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah killed dozens. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday described the strike as a “tragic mistake” that was under investigation.

    Tens of thousands of people — many civilians — have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on Hamas after an assault by Hamas fighters in Israel in October. Large portions of Gaza have been destroyed and cut off from aid, spurring months of protests around the world and across the U.S., including on many college campuses.

    The United Nations’ top court ordered Israel to halt its assault on Rafah last week.

    A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman said Monday that officers were called to monitor a protest downtown about 3 p.m.

    “We responded to some protesters walking through the immediate downtown area,” LAPD Officer Jeff Lee said. “Initially they started blocking traffic, but then they were up on the sidewalk obeying traffic laws — and that’s when they went down onto the freeway.”

    California Highway Patrol Sgt. Alejandro Rubio said that LAPD alerted the CHP that about 50 protesters had moved onto the freeway near Alameda Street at 4:48 p.m.

    However, by the time CHP officers arrived at the scene around 5 p.m., there were no longer any protesters on the freeway, Rubio said.

    “They were all on the surface streets,” he said.

    Lee said LAPD officers continued to monitor protesters in the downtown area afterward.

    “We’re just going to ensure public safety and the well-being of all individuals,” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Kevin Rector

    Source link