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Israeli Forces Order New Evacuation of Besieged Northern Gaza Town, Residents Say
A drone view shows smoke above Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, as seen from near Kibbutz Nir Am in southern Israel, December 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg/File Photo
Israeli forces carrying out a weeks-long offensive in northern Gaza ordered any residents remaining in Beit Hanoun to leave the town on Sunday, citing Palestinian terrorist rocket fire from the area, residents said.
The instruction to leave has caused a new wave of displacement, although it was not immediately clear how many people were affected, the residents said.
Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in northern Gaza is aimed at Hamas terrorists and preventing them from regrouping. Its instructions to civilians to evacuate are meant to keep them out of harm’s way, the military says.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fueling speculation Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.
The Israeli military announced its new push into the Beit Hanoun area on Saturday. It said the rocket fire into Israel continued throughout Sunday despite the intense operation there.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had lost communication with people still trapped in the town, and it was unable to send teams into the area because of the raid.
HOSPITALS
Health officials said an Israeli tank shell on Sunday had hit the upper floor of the Al-Ahly Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City near the X-ray division.
The Israeli military said the strike targeted members of the Hamas “Aerial Defence Unit,” who operated from the compound, saying the place no longer served as a hospital. It said the militants was using the compound to plan and execute attacks against Israeli troops in the immediate future.
On Friday, Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, detaining more than 240 Palestinians, including medics.
The military said the hospital had been used as a command center for Hamas, adding on Sunday that 15 of those detained had participated in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and that its operation there had killed about 20 militants.
Hamas denies Israel’s claim that its fighters operate from hospitals, and called for U.N. observers to be sent to Gaza’s medical facilities.
The raid on Kamal Adwan, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in the area out of service, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a post on X.
The post Israeli Forces Order New Evacuation of Besieged Northern Gaza Town, Residents Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Kurdish-led SDF Say Five Members Killed During Attack by Islamic State in Syria
Islamic State slogans painted along the walls of the tunnel was used by Islamic State militants as an underground training camp in the hillside overlooking Mosul, Iraq, March 4, 2017. Photo: via Reuters Connect.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Sunday that five of its members had been killed during an attack by Islamic State militants on a checkpoint in eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zor on July 31.
The SDF was the main fighting force allied to the United States in Syria during fighting that defeated Islamic State in 2019 after the group declared a caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic State has been trying to stage a comeback in the Middle East, the West and Asia. Deir el-Zor city was captured by Islamic State in 2014, but the Syrian army retook it in 2017.
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Armed Groups Attack Security Force Personnel in Syria’s Sweida, Killing One, State TV Reports
People ride a motorcycle past a burned-out military vehicle, following deadly clashes between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes, and government forces, in Syria’s predominantly Druze city of Sweida, Syria, July 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Armed groups attacked personnel from Syria’s internal security forces in Sweida, killing one member and wounding others, and fired shells at several villages in the violence-hit southern province, state-run Ekhbariya TV reported on Sunday.
The report cited a security source as saying the armed groups had violated the ceasefire agreed in the predominantly Druze region, where factional bloodshed killed hundreds of people last month.
Violence in Sweida erupted on July 13 between tribal fighters and Druze factions. Government forces were sent to quell the fighting, but the bloodshed worsened, and Israel carried out strikes on Syrian troops in the name of the Druze.
The Druze are a minority offshoot of Islam with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Sweida province is predominantly Druze but is also home to Sunni tribes, and the communities have had long-standing tensions over land and other resources.
A US-brokered truce ended the fighting, which had raged in Sweida city and surrounding towns for nearly a week. Syria said it would investigate the clashes, setting up a committee to investigate the attacks.
The Sweida bloodshed last month was a major test for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, after a wave of sectarian violence in March that killed hundreds of Alawite citizens in the coastal region.
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Netanyahu Urges Red Cross to Aid Gaza Hostages
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference, in Jerusalem, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Pool
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he spoke with the International Red Cross’s regional head, Julien Lerisson, and requested his involvement in providing food and medical care to hostages held in Gaza.