Erdogan rejects US pressure to cut Hamas ties,
PM Kakar, Syrian PM demand an end to Israeli brutality against Palestinian,
Gaza/Dubai(AFP/Webdesk)_Israel carried out deadly bombardments in Gaza for a second day on Saturday after a week-long truce with Hamas collapsed despite international calls for an extension.
Clouds of grey smoke from the strikes hung over Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry said 240 people had been killed since the pause in hostilities expired early Friday.
Both sides blamed each other for breaking the truce, with Israel claiming that Hamas had tried to fire a rocket before it ended and failed to produce a list of further hostages for release.
“What we’re doing now is striking Hamas military targets all over the Gaza Strip,” Israel Defence Forces spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters on Saturday,
As hostilities resumed, Hamas’s armed wing received “the order to resume combat” and to “defend the Gaza Strip”, according to a source close to the group who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
International leaders and humanitarian groups condemned the return to fighting.
“I deeply regret that military operations have started again in Gaza,” UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on X, formerly Twitter.
Fears of a wider regional conflict grew after the Syrian defence ministry said Israeli strikes had hit Damascus on Saturday and the Hezbollah said one of its members had been killed in an Israeli strike on Lebanon on Friday.
The United States said it is working with regional partners to reach another ceasefire. “We’re going to continue to work with Israel and Egypt and Qatar on efforts to reimplement the pause,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in California on Friday.
During an unprecedented attack on October 7, Hamas fighters broke through Gaza’s militarised border into Israel, killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped around 240, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas in response and unleashed an air and ground campaign that has killed more than 15,000 people, also mostly civilians, the Hamas authorities who run Gaza say.
The Israeli army said on Friday that five of the hostages seized by Hamas had died, and that the Islamist group was still holding “136 hostages, including 17 women and children,
Seven days of hostage-prisoner exchanges had yielded tearful reunions of Israeli families with their released relatives and jubilation in the streets of the occupied West Bank as Palestinian prisoners walked free from Israeli jails.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Dubai that the United States remained “intensely focused on getting everyone home, getting hostages back” and “pursuing the process that had worked for seven days” during the truce.
But Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy told reporters: “Having chosen to hold onto our women, Hamas will now take the mother of all thumpings.”
The Israeli military said that “ground, air and naval forces struck terror targets in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, including in Khan Yunis and Rafah.”
Outside the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, a man in a blue sweater bellowed in grief and turned his face and hands to the sky after viewing a dead boy in a body bag, AFPTV footage showed.
“What did he do wrong? God, what did we do to deserve this?” he yelled.
Guterres has warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, where the United Nations says 1.7 million people are displaced and short of food, water and other essentials.
“The healthcare service is on its knees,” Rob Holden, a World Health Organization (WHO) senior emergency officer, told journalists from Gaza as explosions were heard in the background.
“It is like a horror movie.”
On a bed at Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital, Amal Abu Dagga wept, her beige veil covered in blood.
“I don’t even know what happened to my children,” she said. A relative, Jamil Abu Dagga, told AFP the family had been at home when the bombs started falling.
In Israel, sirens warning of potential missiles sounded in several communities near Gaza. Authorities said they were restarting security measures in the area, including closing schools.
A rocket strike destroyed a van in one Israeli community near Gaza,
Guterres has warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, where the United Nations says 1.7 million people are displaced and short of food, water and other essentials.
“The healthcare service is on its knees,” Rob Holden, a World Health Organization (WHO) senior emergency officer, told journalists from Gaza as explosions were heard in the background.
“It is like a horror movie.”
On a bed at Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital, Amal Abu Dagga wept, her beige veil covered in blood.
“I don’t even know what happened to my children,” she said. A relative, Jamil Abu Dagga, told AFP the family had been at home when the bombs started falling.
In Israel, sirens warning of potential missiles sounded in several communities near Gaza. Authorities said they were restarting security measures in the area, including closing schools.
A rocket strike destroyed a van in one Israeli community near Gaza.
Mediation efforts by Qatar and Egypt were ongoing, said a source briefed on the talks who asked not to be named.
During the seven-day truce, Hamas freed 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, and more aid entered Gaza.
Twenty-five other hostages, mostly Thais, were also freed in separate arrangements.
The Israeli military published a map of “evacuation zones” in the Gaza Strip that it said would enable residents to “evacuate from specific places for their safety if required”.
Residents in various areas of Gaza were sent SMS warnings on Friday.
Israeli forces “will begin a crushing military attack on your area of residence with the aim of eliminating the terrorist organisation Hamas,” the warnings said.
“Stay away from all military activity of every kind.”
On Thursday, eight Israeli hostages, some holding dual nationality, were released in the seventh round of exchanges under the truce.
The country’s prison service later said another 30 Palestinian prisoners — 23 minors and seven women — had been freed.
Hamas said it had offered to hand over the bodies of a mother and her two sons — one of them a baby — in talks to extend the now-expired truce.
Israeli officials refused to comment on what they called Hamas “propaganda”.
Shiri Bibas, her 10-month-old son Kfir and his four-year-old brother Ariel, along with their father Yarden, have become emblematic of the October 7 attacks.
Hours after the truce collapsed, Israeli bombardment killed three people in southern Lebanon, one of them a Hezbollah member, according to the Iran-backed militant group.
Hezbollah meanwhile claimed its first attacks on Israel since the truce ended.
Erdogan rejects US pressure to cut Hamas ties,
Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday pushed back against mounting US pressure to cut Ankara’s historic ties with Hamas in the wake of the militants’ unprecedented attacks on Israel.
The US Treasury’s top terrorism financing official conveyed Washington’s “profound” alarm about the Ankara’s past relations with Hamas during a visit to Turkey this week.
Under Secretary Brian Nelson said Washington has not detected any money passing through Turkey to Hamas since the Gaza war broke out eight weeks ago.
But he argued that Ankara had helped Hamas access funding in the past and should now use local laws to clamp down on potential future transfers of funds.
Erdogan said on Saturday that Washington was well aware that Turkey does not view Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
“First of all, Hamas is a reality of Palestine, it is a political party there and it entered the elections as a political party and won,” he said in remarks released by his office.
“We form our foreign policy in Ankara and design it only according to Turkey’s interests and the expectations of our people,” Erdogan said.
“I am sure that our interlocutors appreciate Turkey’s consistent and balanced foreign policy steps in such humanitarian crises and conflicts.”
Israel on Friday resumed punishing air strikes after the sides failed to extend a seven-day truce that had seen 80 Israeli hostages released in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and took around 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage after breaking through the militarised border into southern Israel on October 7.
The Hamas authorities who run Gaza say Israel’s retaliatory air and ground campaign has killed more than 15,000 people — also mostly civilians.
Erdogan has been one of the Muslim world’s most vocal critics of Israel’s unprecedented military operation in Gaza.
He recalled Ankara’s envoy to Tel Aviv and demanded that Israel’s military commanders and political leaders be put on trial for “war crimes”.
Hamas political leaders used Istanbul as one of their foreign bases during Erdogan’s two-decade rule.
Turkish media have reported that they relocated to Qatar after Ankara voiced displeasure with social media images purporting to show Hamas officials celebrating the October 7 attacks.
Earlier,
During a meeting held here between the two leaders on the sidelines of COP28, the two sides discussed the ongoing Israeli violence against Palestinian people and called on the international community to take meaningful notice of the situation.
The two leaders also expressed the commitment to strengthen bilateral cooperation in diverse fields, including economic, cultural and tourism besides agreeing to revive the joint ministerial commission.
They also reviewed the bilateral relationship and agreed to enhance the frequency of bilateral political exchanges to foster understanding between the leadership and the brotherly peoples of the two countries.
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