Israel orders new evacuation of besieged Gaza town; hostages were tortured, says new report

Hostages held in Gaza were subjected to torture, including sexual and psychological abuse, starvation, burns and medical neglect, according to a new report by the Israeli Health Ministry that will be submitted to the United Nations this week.

Holding elections in Syria could take up to four years, Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said in an interview with Al Arabiya on Sunday, the first time he has commented on a possible timetable for elections since Bashar al-Assad was ousted this month.

Israeli forces order new evacuation of besieged Gaza town

Israeli forces carrying out a weekslong offensive in northern Gaza ordered any residents remaining in Beit Hanoun to leave the town on Sunday, citing Palestinian militant rocket fire from the area, said residents.

The instruction to leave caused a new wave of displacement, although it was not immediately clear how many people were affected, said the residents.

Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in northern Gaza is aimed at Hamas militants and preventing them from regrouping. Its instructions to civilians to evacuate are meant to keep them out of harm’s way, says the military.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.

Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fuelling speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.

The Israeli military announced its new push into the Beit Hanoun area on Saturday. It said the rocket fire into Israel continued throughout Sunday despite the intense operation there.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had lost communication with people still trapped in the town and was unable to send teams into the area because of the raid.

Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes across the enclave killed at least 23 people on Sunday. One of those strikes killed seven people and wounded others at Al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City, said the Palestinian civil emergency service.

Later on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike killed seven additional people in a house in Beit Hanoun, said medics. There was no immediate Israeli comment.

Health officials said an Israeli tank shell on Sunday had hit the upper floor of the Al-Ahly Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City near the X-ray division.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted members of the Hamas “Aerial Defence Unit”, who operated from the compound, saying the place no longer served as a hospital. It said the militants were using the compound to plan and execute attacks against Israeli troops in the immediate future.

On Friday, Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, detaining more than 240 Palestinians, including medics.

The military said the hospital had been used as a command centre for Hamas, adding on Sunday that 15 of those detained had participated in the 7 October attack on Israel and that its operation there had killed about 20 combatants.

Hamas denies Israel’s claim that its fighters operate from hospitals and called for UN observers to be sent to Gaza’s medical facilities.

The raid on Kamal Adwan, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in the area out of service, said the World Health Organization in a post on X.

Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.

The war was triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Gaza captors tortured hostages, including minors: Israeli report 

Hostages held in Gaza were subjected to torture, including sexual and psychological abuse, starvation, burns and medical neglect, according to a new report by the Israeli Health Ministry that will be submitted to the United Nations this week.

The report is based on interviews with the medical and welfare teams which treated more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages, most of whom were released in late November 2023, in a brief truce between Israel and Hamas. Eight hostages were rescued by the Israeli military.

The hostages include more than 30 children and teenagers, a few of whom were found to have been bound, beaten or branded with a heated object, according to the report addressed to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and published late on Saturday.

Women reported sexual assault by the captors, including at gunpoint. Men were beaten, starved, branded, held bound in isolation and denied access to a bathroom, according to the report. Some were denied treatment for injuries and medical conditions.

The report did not identify any of the hostages by name or age, to protect their privacy, but some of the descriptions matched those provided by hostages and staff that treated them in interviews with Reuters and other media and a UN report.

Hamas has repeatedly denied abuse of the 251 hostages abducted from Israel during its 7 October 2023 assault. About half of the 100 hostages still held in Gaza are believed by Israeli authorities to still be alive.

A fresh bid to secure a Gaza ceasefire including a hostage deal has gained momentum in recent weeks, although no breakthrough has been reported as yet.

Israeli authorities are investigating allegations of abuse against Palestinian detainees arrested during the war.

Syria’s de facto leader says holding elections could take up to four years

Holding elections in Syria could take up to four years, Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said in an interview with Al Arabiya on Sunday, the first time he has commented on a possible timetable for elections since Bashar al-Assad was ousted this month.

Drafting a new constitution could take up to three years, Sharaa said in excerpts from the interview with the Saudi state-owned broadcaster. He also said it would take about a year for Syrians to see drastic changes.

Sharaa leads the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that ousted Assad on 8 December, ending decades of Assad family rule and a 13-year civil war. He said HTS would be dissolved in a national dialogue conference.

On foreign ties, Sharaa said Syria had strategic interests with Russia. Russia had military bases in Syria, was a close Assad ally during the long civil war and had granted Assad asylum.

Sharaa said earlier this month that Syria’s relations with Russia should serve common interests.

Sharaa also said he hoped the administration of US President-elect Donald Trump would lift sanctions imposed on Syria. Senior US diplomats who visited Damascus this month said Sharaa came across as pragmatic and that Washington had decided to remove a $10-million bounty on the HTS leader’s head. DM

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