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Shahd Tahrawi was wounded in an Israeli strike on Gaza, Hossam Abd al-Rahman suffered burns in an explosion in Iraq and bombardment in Yemen has left Mohammed Zakaria in need of multiple surgeries.They all met at the charitable Al-Mowasah hospital in the Jordanian capital Amman, which treats some of the many civilians wounded in conflicts across the Middle East.”I feel sad when I look around me in this place” seeing “people like me, innocent, simple civilians” whose lives have been blighted by the horrors of war, said Abd al-Rahman, a 21-year-old Iraqi patient.”They are victims of war, burned by its fires… but had no part in igniting them,” he told AFP.He is waiting for his ninth operation at the Amman hospital, to treat third-degree burns to his face, neck, abdomen, back and hand he suffered in an accident with unexploded ordnance in his native city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.”I was a child when I was burned 10 years ago,” he said.”My life was completely destroyed, and my future was lost. I left school even though my dream was to become a pilot one day.”Abd al-Rahman, who had 17 surgeries in Iraq before arriving at the hospital in Jordan, said that through “all these painful operations”, he hopes to “regain some of my appearance and life as a normal human being”.At Al-Mowasah, also known as the Specialised Hospital for Reconstructive Surgery and run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Abd al-Rahman said he has found comfort in meeting patients from around the region.”We spend long periods of time here, sometimes many months, and these friendships reduce our loneliness and homesickness.”- ‘They feel safe’ -MSF field communications manager Merel van de Geyn said the hospital has patients “from conflict zones across the Middle East, from Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Gaza”.”We provide them with complete treatment free of charge” and cover the cost of flights, food and other expenses, she said.In addition to the medical procedures, the hospital places great importance on psychological support.”Here, they feel safe,” said van de Geyn.”They’re surrounded by people who have gone through similar experiences… Mutual support truly helps them.”From her room on the hospital’s fifth floor, Shahd Tahrawi, a 17-year-old Palestinian, recalled the night of December 9, 2023, when a massive explosion destroyed her family’s home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.The Israeli bombardment killed her father and 11-year-old sister, and left Shahd and her mother wounded.Shahd has had five operations on her left leg, three of them in Jordan.She said that on the night of the strike, she was woken up by the sound of the explosion and the rubble falling on her.”I started screaming, ‘Help me, help me!’… and then I lost conciousness.”Now, she said her dream was to become a doctor and help “save people’s lives, just like the doctors save mine”.- ‘Nothing but destruction’ -The hospital was established in 2006 to treat victims of the sectarian violence that erupted in Iraq in the aftermath of the US-led invasion, but has since expanded its mission.In just under two decades, 8,367 patients from Iraq, Yemen, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, Libya and Syria have undergone a total of 18,323 surgeries for injuries caused by bullets, explosions, bombardment, air strikes and building collapses in conflict.The hospital has 148 beds, three operating theatres, and physiotherapy and psychological support departments.In one room, four Yemeni patients were convalescing.One of them, 16-year-old Mohammed Zakaria, had dreamt of becoming a professional footballer, before his life changed dramatically when an air strike blew up a fuel tanker in Yarim, south of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, in 2016.The blast killed six of his relatives and friends, his father, Zakaria Hail, said.”The war has brought us nothing but destruction,” said the father, sitting next to his son who is unable to speak after recent surgery to his mouth.

A new documentary purports to name the Israeli soldier who killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was gunned down in the West Bank while reporting in 2022.Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist known for her coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, was shot dead in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank while she worked, wearing a bulletproof vest marked “press.”Al Jazeera and witnesses immediately blamed the Israeli army. Then Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said it was probable the shots had come from Palestinian militants. In the weeks that followed, several journalistic investigations pointed the blame at Israeli gunfire. Months later, Israel released an internal investigation that found a “high probability” that Abu Akleh was accidentally shot by the Israeli army, which claimed it was targeting armed Palestinians.Produced by independent news site Zeteo, the documentary “Who killed Shireen?” names for the first time the suspect as Alon Scaggio, an elite soldier.”Israel did everything it could to conceal the soldier’s identity, they wouldn’t provide the US with any information. They wouldn’t let the US interview him. They wouldn’t give the US his statement. And they wouldn’t give his name,” said Dion Nissenbaum, a journalist who worked on the film.Assisted by producer Conor Powell and reporter Fatima AbdulKarim — who worked for The New York Times in the West Bank — Nissenbaum, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent, consulted testimony from two Israeli soldiers present in Jenin on May 11, 2022 as well as top US officials.- ‘Intentional killing’ claim -The documentary alleges that Scaggio, then 20, had completed training for the elite Duvdevan unit just three months prior.”He shot her intentionally. There’s no question about that. The question is did he know she was a journalist and did he know she was Shireen Abu Akleh? Was it an order from above?” Nissenbaum told AFP.”Personally, I don’t think it was an order. I don’t think he knew it was Shireen. Nobody ever has indicated that he could tell that it was Shireen. But she was wearing the blue flak-jacket with the word ‘press’ on it.””The evidence (suggests)… it was an intentional killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. Whether or not they knew it was her or not can very well be debated, but they would have absolutely known that it was a media person or a non-combatant at a minimum,” said a senior official from the administration of then US president Joe Biden, speaking in the film anonymously.Washington did not exert significant pressure on the issue, the documentary claims, for fear of antagonizing its ally.Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said he called on Biden to declassify documents about the killing — but went unanswered.The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said “it is the first time that a potential suspect has been named in connection with an Israeli killing of a journalist” according to its records dating back to 1992.Impunity in the case “has effectively given Israel permission to silence hundreds more” journalists, the CPJ said.Reporters Without Borders estimates around 200 journalists were killed in the past 18 months of Israeli strikes on Gaza.An Israeli army spokesman condemned the unauthorized disclosure of the suspect’s name despite no “definitive determination” of who shot Abu Akleh.The soldier in question “fell during an operational activity,” the army added.Nissenbaum had initially thought Scaggio died in Gaza, but ultimately concluded he was killed in Jenin on June 27, 2024 almost two years after Abu Akleh.  

Senior US and Chinese officials on Saturday concluded the first of two days of talks aimed at resolving the trade war sparked by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, with Chinese state media calling the negotiations an “important step.”US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng for …

US, China conclude first day of trade talks in Geneva Read More »

Hamas’s armed wing released a video on Saturday showing two Israeli hostages alive in the Gaza Strip, with one of the two men calling to end the 19-month-long war.The pair were identified by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group as Elkana Bohbot and Yosef Haim Ohana, who were kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war.The undated three-minute video footage released by Hamas’s Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades shows one of the hostages, 36-year-old Bohbot, visibly weak and lying on the floor wrapped in a blanket.The second hostage, Ohana, 24, speaks in Hebrew urging the Israeli government to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of all remaining captives — a similar message to statements made by other hostages, likely under duress, in previous videos released by Hamas.In a statement, Bohbot’s family said that “Elkana and Yosef are crying out to be saved. While all the people of Israel hear their calls, a handful of decision-makers refuse to listen,” echoing criticism of the Israeli government for failing to bring back the hostages.”How much more can we bear? How much more can they endure? The fact that they are still there is a disgrace,” the family said.Late Saturday, Israeli demonstrators calling for the release of the hostages and an end of the war gathered outside the defence ministry headquarters in the coastal city of Tel Aviv.AFP images showed some protesters holding pictures of the hostages and placards that read “we can save the rest” and “all of them now”.- Uncertainty -Bohbot, a Colombian-Israeli, was seen bound and injured in the face in footage from the day of the Hamas attack, and his family have expressed concern about his health.Bohbot and Ohana, both abducted by Palestinian militants from the site of a music festival, are among 58 hostages held in Gaza since the 2023 attack, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.Hamas also holds the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in a 2014 war.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the fate of three hostages presumed alive was unclear, without naming them.”We know with certainty that 21 hostages are alive… and there are three others whose status, sadly, we do not know,” Netanyahu said in a video shared on his Telegram channel.Israel resumed its military offensive across the Gaza Strip on March 18, after a two-month truce that saw the release of dozens of hostages.Since the ceasefire collapsed, Hamas has released several videos of hostages, including of the two appearing in Saturday’s video.Israel says the renewed offensive aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives, although critics charge that it puts them in mortal danger.Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that at least 2,701 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,810.

The United States and Iran will hold a new round of nuclear talks Sunday in Oman ahead of a visit to the region by Donald Trump, whose key negotiator staked out an increasingly hard line on the issue of uranium enrichment.Trump, who will visit three other Gulf Arab monarchies next week, has voiced hope for reaching a deal with Tehran to avert an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear program that could ignite a wider war.Three previous rounds of talks in Oman and Rome ended with notes of optimism, with the two sides saying the atmosphere was friendly despite the countries’ four decades of enmity.But they are not believed to have gone into technical detail, and basic questions remain.Steve Witkoff, Trump’s friend who has served as his globe-trotting negotiator on issues including on Iran, had initially suggested flexibility on Tehran maintaining low-level enrichment of uranium for civilian purposes.But in an interview published Friday, Witkoff gave his clearest message yet that the Trump administration would oppose any enrichment.”An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line. No enrichment,” he told right-wing Breitbart News.”That means dismantlement, it means no weaponization, and it means that Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan — those are their three enrichment facilities — have to be dismantled,” he said.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier raised the possibility of Iran importing enriched uranium for any civilian energy.Trump in his first term withdrew from a nuclear agreement with Tehran negotiated by former president Barack Obama that allowed Iran to enrich uranium at levels well below what is needed for weapons.Many Iran watchers doubted that Iran would ever voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear program and give up all enrichment.But Iran has found itself in a weaker place over the past year. Israel has decimated Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia backed by Iran that could launch a counter-attack in any war, and Iran’s main ally in the Arab world, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, was toppled in December.Israel also struck Iranian air defenses as the two countries came openly to blows in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, which is also supported by Iran’s clerical state.- ‘Blow ’em up nicely’ -Trump himself has acknowledged tensions in his policy on Iran, saying at the start of his second term that hawkish advisors were pushing him to step up pressure reluctantly.In an interview Thursday, Trump said he wanted “total verification” that Iran’s contested nuclear work is shut down but through diplomacy.”I’d much rather make a deal” than see military action, Trump told the conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.”There are only two alternatives — blow ’em up nicely or blow ’em up viciously,” Trump said.Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Oman, which has been mediating, had proposed Sunday as the date and both sides had accepted.”Negotiations are moving ahead and naturally, the more we advance, the more consultations we have, and the more time the delegations need to examine the issues,” he said in a video carried by Iranian media.”But what’s important is that we are moving forward so that we gradually get into the details,” Araghchi said.The Trump administration has kept piling on sanctions despite the talks, angering Iran. On Thursday, the United States imposed sanctions on another refinery in China, the main market for Iranian oil.Since Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era deal, the United States has used its power to try to stop all other countries from buying Iranian oil.