Israeli strikes on Syria kill at least 25 people, war monitor says
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, has given an updated death toll resulting from the Israeli strikes overnight across Syria. The death toll is now 25, up from 18 earlier.
The war monitor said among the people killed were “five civilians, four soldiers and intelligence personnel and 13 Syrians working with pro-Iran groups”. Three more bodies were unidentified, the observatory added.
The observatory described the Sunday night strike as “one of the most violent Israeli attacks” in Syria in years and said it was carried out with 14 missiles.
The Syrian state news agency is reporting that 16 people were killed. The Guardian has not yet independently verified these figures.
Key events
The World Food Programme (WFP), the UN’s food agency, says 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza are in “urgent” need of food and livelihood assistance.
The WFP in the Middle East and north Africa said Israeli evacuation orders are hindering efforts to deliver aid. The agency reiterated its call for an immediate ceasefire.
🔴11 months of war in #Gaza
And 2.2 million people are still in urgent need of food & livelihood assistance.
Despite @WFP’s commitment to deliver aid, evacuation orders are hindering our efforts, and needs are on the rise.
A ceasefire is needed! pic.twitter.com/uHJAPFnchd
— WFP in the Middle East & North Africa (@WFP_MENA) September 9, 2024
Víctor Aguayo, Unicef’s director of child Nutrition, has said that one of the most severe food and nutrition crises in history is currently being experienced by Palestinian people in Gaza.
He said the impact of the war and “severe restrictions” on the humanitarian response have led to a “complete collapse” of food, health and protection systems, with “catastrophic consequences”.
Aguayo warned that there is a real risk of famine, with most of the agricultural land in the Gaza Strip having been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.
Under the technical definition of famine, 20% of households must face an extreme lack of food, or essentially be starving. One-third of children must be suffering from acute malnutrition or wasting, and two adults or four children for every 10,000 people must be dying daily from hunger and its complications.
Death toll in Gaza reaches 40,988, says health ministry
At least 40,988 Palestinian people have been killed and 94,825 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The health ministry has said thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the enclave.
The UN’s Palestine relief agency, Unrwa, has said that over 446,000 children in Gaza have been vaccinated against polio so far, after Hamas and Israel agreed on limited pauses in their fighting,
“As of tomorrow, the campaign will move to the north entering its most complex phase. Many more children urgently need the vaccine,” Unrwa, the main channel for humanitarian support for Palestinians, wrote in a post on X.
The World Health Organization believes that 90% of children under 10 in Gaza must be immunised for the campaign to be effective.
At the end of the second phase of the #polio vaccination campaign in #Gaza, @UNRWA teams and partners have vaccinated over 446,000 children.
As of tomorrow, the campaign will move to the north entering its most complex phase. Many more children urgently need the vaccine. pic.twitter.com/z9EWNWUPE8
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) September 9, 2024
The vaccination campaign comes after a case was discovered last month for the first time in 25 years after doctors concluded a 10-month-old had been partially paralysed by a mutated strain of the polio virus after not being vaccinated due to the war.
Health officials said on Monday that two separate Israeli airstrikes had killed seven people in central Gaza, while another strike killed one man in Khan Younis further south.
As we reported in an earlier post, the new school year in the Palestinian territories officially began on Monday. But all schools in Gaza are shut after 11 months of Israel’s war and no sign of an immediate ceasefire.
In addition to the 625,000 Palestinians already registered for school who would be missing classes, another 58,000 six-year-olds should have registered to start first grade this year, the education ministry said.
ActionAid have spoken to schoolchildren whose education has been disrupted because of the devastating impacts of the war.
Arwa said:
[I am] an 11-year-old student in the fifth grade. I lost my right of going to school as displaced people need to live there. Most schools were destroyed, burnt down or bombarded as a result of the ongoing war. I really miss my school. I miss my friends and my teachers very much.
Maryam said:
My house was bombed, and I now live in my school. I wish to go back home. I wish for the war to be over. I don’t want to live in my school. I want to learn in it. I miss my friends and my teachers … My books were burnt to ashes. My bag was torn, and my notebooks are gone … I wish to go back home. I wish to get back to learning. I want to put on my school uniform and get ready for school. And to buy my school supplies.
Raed, aged 9, said:
I really miss my school and wish to go back [to] learn. I haven’t been in school, nor have I studied for 10 months now.
Mona, aged 7, said:
I miss my school and my friends a lot. I miss holding a pen and writing. I miss writing and learning my alphabet.
Here are some of the latest images coming out from the newswires:
In the latest evacuation order, the Israeli military has told residents of an area in the northern Gaza Strip they must leave their homes, after the firing of rockets into southern Israel the previous day.
“To all those in the specified area. Terrorist organisations are once again firing rockets at the State of Israel and carrying out terrorist acts from this area. The specified area has been warned many times in the past. The specified area is considered a dangerous combat zone,” an Israeli military spokesperson wrote on X.
The vast majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced, often multiple times, and more than 85% of the territory has been put under evacuation orders by the Israeli military, according to the UN.
Several hundred thousand people have packed into al-Mawasi, a so-called safe zone located west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, since the beginning of the conflict despite minimal provision there of even basic services.
Rebecca Root
Almost every week this year, Jagan Chapagain has had to sign a letter of condolence to the families of aid workers killed in the line of duty while serving the world’s largest humanitarian network. A volunteer in Sudan, shot while collecting data; a paramedic gunned down while evacuating wounded civilians in the West Bank; and an ambulance driver in Ethiopia, who died of a bullet wound on his way to hospital, are among the 28 staff and volunteers the secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has commemorated since the year began.
By late August, 187 aid workers around the world, who play a vital role in delivering food, water and medical supplies during crises, had been killed, making 2024 likely to be the deadliest year ever for aid workers. Last year currently holds that title, when 280 lost their lives compared with 118 in 2022. The Israeli-Gaza war, where more than 280 aid workers have been killed since 7 October, as well as Sudan and South Sudan accounted for most of the deaths.
It is largely local aid workers, who usually do not have access to the same level of security, training and protection as international staff, who are the most likely victims.
You can read the full story here:
Israel’s energy minister Eli Cohen has warned the international community that it should not complain if Israel “acts with force to exact a heavy price from Lebanon” if the community is unable to “restrain” Hezbollah.
Describing Hezbollah as “a terrorist organization that deliberately fires at residential buildings with the intent to kill Israeli civilians” he included in a social media post an image purporting to show damage to a building from an aerial attack.
Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that deliberately fires at residential buildings with the intent to kill Israeli civilians.
If the international community cannot restrain Hezbollah, it shouldn’t complain when we act with force and exact a heavy price from Lebanon and… pic.twitter.com/WNeTUJbZIa— אלי כהן | Eli Cohen (@elicoh1) September 9, 2024
Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent for the Times of Israel, reports that a barrage of 15 rockets has been fired into Israel from the direction of Lebanon.
Citing the IDF, he writes that “The rockets struck open areas, and there are no reports of injuries.”
Earlier a drone from the direction of Lebanon was reported to have struck a high-rise building in the Israeli city of Nahariya.
In a statement on its official Telegram channel, Israel’s military has claimed to have located “a machine used to produce weapons” in the Zeitoun area of northern Gaza.
It stated that troops “raided terror targets where terrorists had embedded themselves, eliminated dozens of terrorists and dismantled numerous terrorist infrastructures” in the area.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Bezalel Smotrich, the hardline finance minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, has again today reiterated that he sees it as his life’s mission to “thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
In a post to social media, echoing words he said back in June, Smotrich said:
My life’s mission is to build the land of Israel and thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger the state of Israel. It is not political. It is national and existential.
This is the reason why I took upon myself, in addition to the position of minister of finance, also the responsibility for the civil issues in Judea and Samaria. [An Israeli term for the occupied West Bank]
I will continue to work with all my might so that the half million settlers who are on the frontline and under fire will enjoy the rights of every citizen in Israel and to establish facts on the ground that will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state that will be a forward Iranian base for the next massacre.
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, has said that 25 people were killed in overnight Israeli airstrikes on Syria. Iran described the airstrikes as a “criminal” attack on Syria. The main target appeared to be a military research centre in Masyaf associated with Syria’s chemical and ballistic missiles programme but explosions were also heard in Damascus, Homs and Tartus.
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Benny Gantz, the centre-right National Unity party leader and former defence minister, has reportedly said that Israel should shift its focus toward Hezbollah and the Lebanese border. “The story of Hamas is old news,” Gantz was quoted as saying at a Middle East forum in Washington DC. He said that, instead, “the story of Iran and its proxies all around the area and what they are trying to do is the real issue.”
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The UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, said that ending the war in Gaza is a priority and asked countries to act on what he called Israel’s “blatant disregard” for international law in the occupied Palestinian territories.
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The director of Northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, Hussam Abu Safia, warned that the hospital will be out of service within 48 hours due to fuel shortages and a lack of critical medical supplies. Safia said fuel shortages in the intensive care unit could lead to the deaths of dozens of children.
The Syrian foreign ministry has condemned the overnight Israeli strikes on Syria as an act of blatant aggression. In addition to the people killed and injured in the attack, it had caused “material damage to some residential areas”, the ministry said in a statement reported by Syria’s official news agency, Sana.
Two regional intelligence sources told Reuters that a major military research centre for chemical arms production located near Masyaf, in Hama province near the Mediterranean coast, had been hit several times. They said it was believed to house a team of Iranian military experts involved in weapons production.
“We do not confirm what was reported by media outlets linked to the Zionist regime (Israel) about an attack on an Iranian centre or a centre under Iran’s protection”, Iran’s foreign minister spokesperson Nasser Kanaani told journalists.
Israeli strikes on Syria kill at least 25 people, war monitor says
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, has given an updated death toll resulting from the Israeli strikes overnight across Syria. The death toll is now 25, up from 18 earlier.
The war monitor said among the people killed were “five civilians, four soldiers and intelligence personnel and 13 Syrians working with pro-Iran groups”. Three more bodies were unidentified, the observatory added.
The observatory described the Sunday night strike as “one of the most violent Israeli attacks” in Syria in years and said it was carried out with 14 missiles.
The Syrian state news agency is reporting that 16 people were killed. The Guardian has not yet independently verified these figures.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under huge pressure to agree a hostage-for-peace deal with Hamas that has been under negotiation for several months. A major impasse in the negotiations has been the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt and the Netzarim east-west corridor across the territory. Netanyahu has insisted that Israel retain control of the corridors to prevent smuggling and catch militant fighters. Hamas is demanding the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
The Philadelphi corridor only emerged as an Israeli government talking point in recent weeks, and was not part of the plan that the US president, Joe Biden, had presented in May, which the Israeli government said at the time it accepted.
About 250 hostages were taken by the Hamas-led 7 October attacks on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed. 97 hostages abducted during the attack remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces, according to the Times of Israel.
An Israeli official told the outlet that the Israeli government still expects a new US proposal for a hostage deal to be presented in the future.
“We are waiting,” says the official. “The Americans are being cautious, they don’t want to put forward a deal that they know will be rejected by Hamas. They know that Hamas is the one putting obstacles in the way.” “Just because it’s not happening soon doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” the official added.
Here are some more remarks given by Volker Turk, the UN’s human rights chief, in the traditional opening address to sessions of the human rights council, which typically list a wide range of pressing global concerns. Its five-week autumn session opened today.
Turk said:
I urge voters to ask themselves which of the political platforms or candidates will work for the human rights of everyone.
And I urge all voters to be vigilant. Be wary of the shrill voices, the ‘strongman’ types that throw glitter in our eyes, offering illusory solutions that deny reality.
The director of the Karama Border Crossing police, Mustafa Dawabsheh, was quoted by Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, as saying that the King Hussein Bridge (also known as the Allenby Bridge crossing) will be closed today to the movement of departing and arriving passengers and cargo.
On Sunday, three Israeli workers were killed at the border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan when a Jordanian truck driver opened fire on them. You can read more on this story here.
