Category: 2. World

Israeli airstrikes and gunfire killed at least 18 people in and around Gaza City, local health authorities said, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet prepared to discuss plans to seize the city.

Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of the largest neighbourhoods of Gaza City, told reporters the area had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday, overnight and on Sunday morning, forcing many families to flee.

Local authorities said the latest toll from Israeli tank and gunfire included 13 people who were trying to get food near a food distribution site in the central Gaza Strip, and at least two in a house in Gaza City. An Israeli army spokesperson said it was reviewing the report.

In Barcelona, a humanitarian aid flotilla carrying activists including Greta Thunberg prepared to set sail for the shattered territory on Sunday, two days after the Israeli military ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for some aid deliveries.

Gaza City was a “dangerous combat zone”, the military said in justification for its decision.

Rezik Salah, a father of two from Sheikh Radwan, told Reuters that Israeli troops were now “crawling into the heart of the city … from the east, north and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave”.

In Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Netanyahu’s security cabinet would meet on Sunday evening to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City, although a full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks.

Israel has said it aims to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in. Mirjana Spoljaric of the Red Cross said such a move would provoke a massive population displacement that no other part of the Gaza Strip would be able to absorb.

About half of the territory’s more than 2 million residents are sheltering in Gaza City, local sources estimate, although thousands are believed to have left or to be trying to leave, to seek refuge in more central and southern areas of the territory.

Large crowds in Tel Aviv demonstrated against the war on Saturday night and the families of hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza protested outside the homes of Israeli cabinet ministers on Sunday morning.

Separately on Sunday, Hamas confirmed the death of Mohammed Sinwar, its presumed leader in Gaza, more than three months after Israel said it had identified his body in a tunnel beneath the European hospital in Khan Younis, in central Gaza.

The war began with a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – were killed and 251 taken hostage. Forty-seven hostages are still being held in Gaza, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 63,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Gaza, considered reliable by the UN. It has left much of Gaza in ruins and plunged it into a humanitarian crisis.

The UN this month declared a state of famine in the territory, saying 500,000 people faced “catastrophic” conditions.

The aid flotilla from Barcelona carrying anti-war activists including several European lawmakers and other public figures such as the former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau was due to set sail on Sunday.

Organisers of the Sumud (“Perseverance”, in Arabic) flotilla said it aimed to “break the illegal siege of Gaza” and “open a humanitarian corridor to end the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people”. They did not say how many ships were involved.

Thiago Ávila, a Brazilian activist, said last week that the flotilla, expected to reach Gaza in mid-September, would be “the largest solidarity mission in history, with more people and more boats than all previous attempts combined”.

Dozens of other boats are due to leave Tunisian and other Mediterranean ports on 4 September. Israel has already blocked two attempts by activists to deliver aid by ship to the coastal territory, intercepting the vessels offshore in June and July.

The Israeli army said on Sunday it had carried out a strike on a site run by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. “The existence of the site and the activity within it constitute a violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon,” it said.

WASHINGTON: A post-war plan for Gaza is circulating within President Donald Trump’s administration that would see the US administer the war-torn enclave for at least a decade, the relocation of Gaza’s population and its rebuilding as a tourist resort and manufacturing hub, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The Washington Post said that according to a 38-page prospectus it had seen, Gaza’s 2 million population would at least temporarily leave either through “voluntary” departures to another country or into restricted areas within the territory during reconstruction.

Reuters previously reported there is a proposal to build large-scale camps called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” inside — and possibly outside — Gaza to house the Palestinian population. That plan carried the name of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, a controversial US-backed aid group.

Anyone who owns land would be offered a “digital token” in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, the Post reported, adding that each Palestinian who left would be provided with $5,000 in cash and subsidies to cover four years of rent. They would also be provided with a year of food, it added.

The Post said the plan is called the “Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT Trust,” and was developed by the GHF.

GHF coordinates with the Israeli military and uses private US security and logistics companies to get food aid into Gaza.

It is favored by the Trump administration and Israel to carry out humanitarian efforts in Gaza as opposed to the UN-led system which Israel says lets militants divert aid.

In early August, the UN said more than 1,000 people have been killed trying to receive aid in Gaza since the GHF began operating in May 2025, most of them shot by Israeli forces operating near GHF sites.

The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the plan to rebuild Gaza appears to fall in line with previous comments made by Trump.

On February 4, Trump first publicly said that the US should “take over” the war-battered enclave and rebuild it as “the Riviera of the Middle East” after resettling the Palestinian population elsewhere.

Trump’s comments angered many Palestinians and humanitarian groups about the possible forced relocation from Gaza.

Israeli forces pounded the suburbs of Gaza City overnight from the air and ground, destroying homes and driving more families out of the area as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet was set on Sunday to discuss a plan to seize the city.

The Israeli military has gradually escalated its operations around Gaza City over the past three weeks.

On Friday it ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for aid deliveries, designating it a “dangerous combat zone.”

On Sunday, the head of the World Food Programme said Israel’s designation would impact food access and put humanitarian aid workers in danger.

“It’s going to limit the amount of food that they have access to,” WFP executive director Cindy McCain said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” program.

A report released earlier this month by the global hunger monitor, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said that approximately 514,000 people — nearly a quarter of Gaza’s population — are facing famine conditions in Gaza City and surrounding areas.

Israel has dismissed the IPC’s findings as false and biased, saying it had based its survey on partial data largely provided by Hamas, which did not take into account a recent influx of food.

Violent clashes have erupted in Indonesia between the riot police and protesters demanding the withdrawal of financial perks for lawmakers, while common people are reportedly being paid low wages.

Tensions soared across the country on Sunday after the video of a delivery rider being allegedly run over by an armoured police vehicle during a rally last week went viral, prompting anger in several cities of Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

A fire started by the protesters at a council building in eastern Indonesia killed at least three people, a local official said on Saturday.

The protests are the biggest and most violent of Prabowo Subianto’s presidency, a key test for the ex-general, less than a year into his rule.

Protesters gathered again in different areas of Indonesia’s vast archipelago over the weekend. Hundreds of students and “ojek” motorcycle taxi drivers protested in front of police headquarters in Bali, Indonesia’s most popular tourist hotspot.

Hundreds of students in Surabaya also rallied outside the East Java police headquarters, as social media app TikTok said it had temporarily suspended its live feature for “a few days” in Indonesia, where it has more than 100 million users.

In the capital, Jakarta, hundreds had massed on Friday outside the headquarters of the elite Mobile Brigade Corps (Brimob), the paramilitary police unit they blamed for motorcycle gig driver Affan Kurniawan’s death the day before.

President Prabowo urged calm and ordered an investigation into the driver’s death, saying the officers involved will be held accountable.

On Saturday, he cancelled a planned trip to China next week for a military parade commemorating the end of World War II to monitor the situation at home.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are among the twenty world leaders attending a regional security summit in China.

Ahead of the annual gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the port city of Tianjin, Modi is holding talks with China’s president, Xi Jinping. It is Modi’s first time in China in seven years.

Putin, who is a close ally of China, arrived to a rolled out red carpet in Tianjin on Sunday.

The summit comes as US President Trump has imposed steep tariffs on Indian goods as punishment for Delhi’s continued purchase of Russian oil, and Putin faces threats of sanctions for his ongoing war on Ukraine.

There are 10 member states in the Beijing backed SCO – including Pakistan, Iran – and 16 dialogue partners and observers.

The summit itself is largely symbolic but will allow leaders to air common grievances and shared interests – and this year the gathering will be overshadowed by trade wars with the US.

The organisation was created by China, Russia and four Central Asian countries in 2001 as a countermeasure to limit the influence of Western alliances such as Nato.

This year’s gathering is the largest since the organisation was founded.

For Tianjin, the summit has become a major event with banners and billboards promoting it throughout the northern port city.

At night tens of thousands of local spectators have been cramming into the riverside area to see a lightshow displayed on tower blocks while the gathering is taking place.

The streets have been heavily crowded – making it difficult for people to even move, especially on and around the historic Jiefang Bridge.

During the day pedestrians are at times being made to wait as roadblocks go up to allow the motorcades of visiting world leaders to pass by quickly.

Taxis and other hire car services have been suspended in the downtown area, but this has not dampened the enthusiasm of crowds of people wanting to be part of what has been described as a historic meeting.

However, police have advised Tianjin’s more than 13 million residents to avoid moving around the city if possible and to stick to shops nearby them to purchase any immediate necessities.

The meeting comes days before the massive military parade that will mark 80 years since the end of World War II.

The notorious spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing in the Gaza Strip was said to have been the target of an Israeli airstrike on Saturday, the results of which were not immediately clear but which left Israeli officials feeling cautiously optimistic.

The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet said in a statement on Saturday evening that they had carried out an airstrike on a senior Hamas operative in the Gaza City area, in the northern Gaza Strip.

While the statement did not provide the identity of the targeted terror operative, multiple Hebrew media outlets reported that it was the longtime Hamas spokesman, Hudayfa Samir Abdallah al-Kahlout, more widely known by his nom de guerre Abu Obeida.

Abu Obeida is always masked in his statements to the media, and he is viewed as something of a symbol in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in the Arab world. During the current war, the IDF published an estimation of what his face looks like.

While his fate was not immediately known, unnamed Israeli security sources cited by Hebrew media expressed cautious optimism about the outcome of the strike.

“There is optimism, we have cautiously assessed that the direction is positive,” one security source told Channel 12, while another told the Kan public broadcaster that the outcome was “looking good.”

On Sunday morning, the Saudi channel Al-Arabiya quoted a Palestinian source as saying that he had been killed, along with all the other people who were in the apartment at the time.

The source said that senior Hamas officials and his family members confirmed his death after examining the body.

Reports in Gaza indicated that some 11 people, including children, were killed in the strike on the apartment building that the senior Hamas operative was believed to have been sheltering in.

The IDF said precautions had been taken to minimize civilian harm, including the use of precision munitions and aerial surveillance, along with additional intelligence.

Abu Obeida, spokesman of the Hamas military wing, speaks during a memorial in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on January 31, 2017. (AFP/ Said Khatib/ File)

Hamas swiftly shot down reports of Abu Obeida’s death and published a statement warning that the rumors were simply an attempt at “psychological warfare,” Jordanian news outlet Roya News reported.

According to the news outlet, Hamas warned Palestinians against spreading rumors of his death, as it would assist Israel in its “deliberate” psychological campaign and undermine public trust and unity.

Abu Obeida has been the spokesman of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades since 2004. He rose to prominence in 2006 as he announced the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

He has since been the face of the terror group’s higher-profile statements and its psychological warfare.

Abu Obeida’s last statement was issued on Friday evening, warning Israel that its planned offensive to conquer Gaza City would subject hostages in the area to the “same risks” as the terror group’s fighters.

“We will take care of the prisoners the best we can, and they will be with our fighters in the combat and confrontation zones, subjected to the same risks and the same living conditions,” he said.

His last video statement was aired some two weeks ago, in which he attempted to pressure Israel to agree to a hostage-ceasefire deal accepted by the terror group.

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