#intpol

Jul 15, 2024

« After months of successive attacks on humanitarian aid facilities, Israeli forces have now “completely destroyed” the headquarters of the primary aid group for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the agency reports.

Israeli forces attacked the facility as they carried out their horrific raid of Gaza City last week, leaving nothing but rubble in its place. The building was one of many operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the largest aid group for Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.

UNRWA Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini said that Israel’s attack on the facility represents a “blatant” war crime.

“Shocking. UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, turned into a battlefield and now flattened,” he said. “Another episode in the blatant disregard of international humanitarian law. United Nations facilities must be protected at all times. They must never be used for military or fighting purposes.”

Jul 15, 2024

« Violent clashes between people loyal to Bangladesh’s ruling party and demonstrators protesting against job quotas for coveted government jobs have wounded at least 100 people, police say.

The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts, totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs, for specific groups, including children of fighters in the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

Critics say the system benefits children of pro-government groups who back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who won her fourth consecutive term in a general election in January that was boycotted by the opposition.

Bangladesh’s top court last week temporarily suspended the quotas, but protesters have promised to continue their rallies until the parts of the scheme they oppose are scrapped completely.

Police and witnesses said hundreds of antiquota protesters and students backing the ruling Awami League party battled for hours on Monday on the Dhaka University campus, hurling rocks, fighting with sticks and beating each other with iron rods.

Some carried machetes while others threw petrol bombs, witnesses said in a report by the AFP news agency. “They clashed with sticks and threw rocks at each other,” police official Mostajirur Rahman told AFP.

Nahid Islam, national coordinator of the antiquota protests, said their “peaceful procession” was attacked by people carrying rods, sticks and rocks. “They beat our female protesters. At least 150 students were injured, including 30 women, and conditions of 20 students are serious,” he said.

Injured student Shahinur Shumi, 26, said the protesters were taken by surprise.

“We were holding our procession peacefully,” she said from her hospital bed at Dhaka Medical Hospital. “Suddenly, the Chhatra League [ruling party’s student wing] attacked us with sticks, machetes, iron rods and bricks.”

Jul 14, 2024

« At 10 a.m. on Saturday, while people were starting their day, the Israeli military targeted the area with successive airstrikes, leading to a massacre that, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, has, as of the time of writing, killed 90 people and injured over 300 others. Half of them are women and children, the health ministry says.

Shaima Farwaneh, 16, was near the site of the massacre when it happened. She was preparing to make breakfast for her family when the bombs fell.

People and sand scattered everywhere, limbs that were once attached to bodies flying over their heads.

“A leg hit me, and I saw dismembered bodies a few meters away,” Shaima told Mondoweiss. “I saw a young child screaming. He lost his lower limbs and was crawling on his hands and screaming. The bombs didn’t stop, and suddenly the boy disappeared. I saw how he vanished before me while we ran and lowered our eyes to the ground, unable to do anything but run.”

Shaima describes hearing seven explosions in short succession before it was over. “What a life we live in these tents that we have to see the dismembered bodies of our siblings and families fly over our heads.”

When the ambulance and Civil Defense crews arrived near a well-known crowded market for residents of the area, their vehicles were targeted as well, according to the director of the Civil Defense in Khan Younis, Yamen Abu Suleiman. Two Civil Defense workers were killed in the strike.

Abu Suleiman said that the occupation targeted Al-Mawasi with a large barrage of missiles, which led to many casualties. “The occupation targeted the area more than once to prevent us from any rescue operation,” he tells Mondoweiss, denouncing the silence of the International Committee of the Red Cross over Israel’s prevention of rescue teams from doing their work.

Israel claims that the airstrikes were an attempt to assassinate Muhammad al-Deif, the head of the armed wing of Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, as well as the commander of al-Qassam’s Khan Younis District Brigade, Rafi Salama. The Gaza government media office denies the Israeli claims, emphasizing that they are nothing but a way of diverting the world’s attention from the reality of the massacre the Israeli army committed as part of the genocide of Gaza’s people.