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Israel military says controls 40 percent of Gaza City

The Israeli military on Thursday said it controls 40 percent of Gaza City, the largest urban centre in the Palestinian territory which it is preparing to conquer after nearly two years of devastating war.Israel has intensified in recent days its bombardments of the area of Gaza City, in the territory’s north, ahead of the planned offensive, despite mounting international pressure to halt the campaign.Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Thursday killed more than 30 people in the city, out of at least 64 Palestinians killed across the Gaza Strip.As concern grows over the dire humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s population of more than two million, one of the European Union’s top officials called the war a “genocide” — a term strongly rejected by Israel, but which several governments and numerous rights groups have adopted.In a televised briefing, Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said that “we hold 40 percent of the territory of Gaza City”, adding that the offensive “will continue to expand and intensify in the coming days”.Defrin vowed to “increase the pressure” on Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war, “until it is defeated”.With the vast majority of Gazans already displaced at least once during the war, a senior Israeli military official told journalists on Wednesday that authorities expected the new offensive to push an estimated one million Palestinians south, away from Gaza City.The United Nations last month declared a famine in and around Gaza City, where it estimates nearly one million people live.- Basic services ‘collapse’ -Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an Israeli air strike on Thursday hit a tent sheltering a displaced Palestinian family in Gaza City, killing five people including three children.Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said forces had targeted “a Hamas terrorist”, adding that it “regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians”.In Tel al-Hawa, the neighbourhood where the strike reported by the civil defence took place, AFP footage showed Palestinians outside damaged tents, clearing up scattered belongings.A pair of blood-stained pink slippers lay amongst the debris.Israa al-Basous, who lives there, recounted seeing the tent next to hers on fire.”My children and I were sleeping in the tent when we heard the sound of bombing. Shrapnel fell on us, and my four children started screaming,” she told AFP.At Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, where the dead and wounded were being received, bodies wrapped in white shrouds lay on the floor of the hospital’s morgue.One woman stroked the head of her dead son as his body lay outside on a stretcher.”Who are you leaving me to, son? Why? Why?” she wept.UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingram, briefing journalists from a visit to the Gaza Strip, said that “the unthinkable in Gaza City has already begun”, with escalating military operation leading to “the collapse of essential services”.”Without immediate and increased access to food… more children will starve,” she said.”Palestinian life is being dismantled here, steadily but surely.”- ‘Destroyed’ -European Commission vice president Teresa Ribera, speaking in Paris, called the war a “genocide” and slammed the 27-nation bloc for failing to act to stop it.”The genocide in Gaza exposes Europe’s failure to act and speak with one voice,” Ribera said, in remarks slammed by Israel as serving “Hamas propaganda”.Top EU officials have so far shied away from calling Israel’s actions a “genocide”.In central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, the civil defence said another Israeli air strike killed seven people including three children.The Israeli military said it was “not aware” of a strike there.AFP footage showed Yousef Suleiman, who said he lost relatives in the pre-dawn strike, walking through a bombed-out shelter where tattered scraps of material hung from tent poles.”The entire tent was destroyed, along with everyone inside,” he told AFP.Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency or the Israeli military.Hamas’s October 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,231 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.A Hamas statement meanwhile said that top officials from the group, which is backed by Iran, met in Doha with Tehran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to discuss efforts to bring the war to an end.

Sudan rescuers pull 370 bodies from Darfur landslide

Rescuers have recovered 370 bodies from a landslide that wiped out a remote mountain village in Sudan’s Darfur region, a local civilian leader said on Thursday.The disaster struck the village of Tarasin, located high in the Jebel Marra range, on Sunday following one of the worst downpours of Sudan’s rainy season, which peaks in August.Up to 1,000 people may have been killed, according to the United Nations, but the full scale of the disaster in the isolated mountain region is unknown.”We recovered 370 bodies and buried them. Others are still trapped under the rocks and some were carried away by floodwaters,” said Ibrahim Suleiman, one of the heads of the civilian administration in Daramo locality, where the village is located, in a video shared by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army.The armed group, commanded by Abdulwahid al-Nur, controls the area around Jebel Marra, and has remained largely neutral in the ongoing war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).Footage released by the group on Thursday shows residents and rescuers gathered at a makeshift burial site, praying for the victims laid to rest. Others were seen digging through thick mud and rubble using shovels and their bare hands to recover more bodies still trapped in the earth.With aid agencies unable to access the area, the operation was being carried out entirely by local residents, members of the SLM and the local Emergency Response Room, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across Sudan.The Sudanese American Medical Association told AFP its team had not yet been able to reach Tarasin due to the rugged terrain and ongoing rainfall.Earlier estimates by the SLM suggested all of the village’s 1,000 residents were killed, with only one known survivor.On Wednesday, the group shared footage of what they said was another survivor, standing at the same site with volunteers.The tragedy comes amid the backdrop of Sudan’s ongoing war, which began in April 2023 between the regular army and the RSF. The conflict has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. Famine has spread in parts of Darfur and southern Sudan while cholera has affected large areas of the country, with Darfur hit hardest.