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UN says hundreds killed in recent weeks while seeking aid in Gaza

Ten Palestinians were reported killed Friday while waiting for rations in Gaza, adding to nearly 800 similar deaths in the last six weeks, according to the UN, with Israel’s army saying it issued new instructions to troops following repeated reports of fatalities.Friday’s reported violence came as negotiators from Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas were locked in indirect talks in Qatar to try to agree on a temporary ceasefire in the more than 21-month conflict.Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he hoped a deal for a 60-day pause in the war could be struck in the coming days, and that he would then be ready to negotiate a more permanent end to hostilities.Hamas has said the free flow of aid is a main sticking point in the talks, with Gaza’s more than two million residents facing a dire humanitarian crisis of hunger and disease amid the grinding conflict.Israel began easing a more than two-month total blockade of aid in late May. Since then, a new US- and Israel-backed organisation called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has effectively sidelined the territory’s vast UN-led aid delivery network.There are frequent reports of Israeli forces firing on people seeking aid, with Gaza’s civil defence agency saying 10 Palestinians were killed Friday while waiting at a distribution point near the southern city of Rafah.- ‘Unacceptable’ -The UN, which refuses to cooperate with GHF over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives, said Friday that 798 people have been killed seeking aid between late May and July 7, including 615 “in the vicinity of the GHF sites”.”Where people are lining up for essential supplies such as food and medicine, and where… they have a choice between being shot or being fed, this is unacceptable,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday’s deaths, but has previously accused militants of firing at civilians in the vicinity of aid centres.Asked about the UN figures, the military said it had worked to minimise “possible friction” between aid seekers and soldiers, and that it conducted “thorough examinations” of incidents in which “harm to civilians who arrived at distribution facilities was reported”.”Instructions were issued to forces in the field following lessons learned,” it added in a statement.GHF called the UN report “false and misleading”, claiming that “most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys”.Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency, told AFP that Israeli forces killed 45 people overall in the territory on Friday.Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the agency and other parties.- Truce talks -In Gaza’s south, a witness said Israeli tanks were seen near Khan Yunis, reporting “intense gunfire, intermittent air strikes, artillery shelling, and ongoing bulldozing and destruction of displacement camps and agricultural land”.Israel’s military said troops were operating in the area against “terrorist infrastructure sites, both above and below ground”.Hamas has said that as part of a potential truce deal it was willing to release 10 of the hostages taken during its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the Gaza war.Netanyahu, who is under pressure to end the war after mounting military losses, said that would leave 10 living hostages still in captivity.”I hope we can complete it in a few days,” he said of the initial ceasefire agreement and hostage release in an interview with US outlet Newsmax.”We’ll probably have a 60-day ceasefire, get the first batch out, then use the 60-day ceasefire to negotiate an end to this.”Netanyahu has said that a key condition of any deal is that Hamas first gives up its weapons and its hold on Gaza, warning that failure to do so on Israel’s terms would lead to further conflict.Another issue holding up a deal is disagreement on the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for hostages, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has said.Hamas has said it wants “real guarantees” for a lasting truce and Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza, and that it opposes any Israeli moves to push Palestinians into “isolated enclaves”.The group’s 2023 attack on Israel led to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.Out of 251 hostages seized in the attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.At least 57,823 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Kurdish PKK fighters destroy weapons at disarmament ceremony

Thirty PKK fighters destroyed their weapons at a symbolic ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday, two months after the Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.The ceremony marked a major step in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from armed insurgency to democratic politics as part of a broader effort to end one of the region’s longest-running conflicts.Analysts say that with the PKK weakened and the Kurdish public exhausted by decades of violence, Turkey’s peace offer handed its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan a chance to make the long-desired switch away from armed struggle.  The PKK’s disarmament also grants President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the distinction of being the Turkish leader who managed to draw a line under a conflict that has cost more than 40,000 lives and wrought havoc in Turkey and beyond. Outside the ancient cave of Casene, a group of 30 PKK fighters, men and women, gathered on a stage in khaki fatigues, their faces uncovered, in front of an audience of around 300 people, an AFP correspondent reported. One by one, they walked down to lay their weapons in a cauldron in which a fire was lit. Most were rifles but there was one machine gun and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. As they looked on, people in the crowd started cheering while others could be heard weeping. After the ceremony, the fighters returned to the mountains, a PKK commander said.- Ocalan’s freedom ‘essential’ -Speaking to AFP after the ceremony, the PKK’s top female commander Bese Hozat said that for the process to succeed, it was essential to release Ocalan — known to his followers as ‘Apo’ — who has been serving life in solitary confinement since 1999. “Ensuring Leader Apo’s physical freedom via legal guarantees is essential… he should be able to freely lead and manage this process. This is our primary condition and demand,” she said. “Without this development, it is highly unlikely that the process will continue successfully.”Erdogan hailed the ceremony as an “important step” on the path to a “terror-free Turkey”, expressing hope it would lead to “the establishment of lasting peace in our region”. A senior Turkish official source described it as “an irreversible turning point”, saying the move to decommission weapons was part of a broader process that would ultimately involve the legal return of former fighters and their reintegration into society. PKK militants have insisted on the need for legal reform in Turkey to allow them to return home and engage in democratic politics, commander Hozat told AFP. “If Turkey… enacts laws and implements radical legal reforms… we will go to Turkey and engage in politics,” she said. “If there is no legal constitutional arrangements, we will either end up in prison or being killed.”- ‘New era’ for Kurds -Turkey’s pro-Kurdish DEM party, which played a key role in facilitating contacts between Ocalan and Ankara, hailed the ceremony as the start of a “new era for the Kurdish issue”. It also filed a legal petition for the release of former top pro-Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, who was jailed in 2016 and sentenced last year to 42 years for his alleged role in a series of deadly 2014 protests. France’s foreign ministry said it welcomed Friday’s ceremony, adding it hoped the PKK’s dissolution would “be effective and verifiable”, bring an end to the violence, and “give rise to an inclusive political process”.The PKK took up arms in 1984, beginning a string of bloody attacks on Turkish soil.But more than four decades on, the PKK in May announced its dissolution and said it would pursue a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with a historic call by Ocalan.Earlier this week, Ocalan said the disarmament process would be “implemented swiftly”.In recent months, the PKK has taken several historic steps, starting with a ceasefire and culminating in its formal dissolution announced on May 12.The shift followed a historic appeal at the end of February by Ocalan, 76, who has spent the past 26 years behind bars. 

Gaza civil defence says Israeli forces kill at least 30

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 30 people on Friday, including 10 who were waiting for aid in the south of the war-ravaged territory. The latest deaths came as the United Nations said nearly 800 people had been killed trying to access food in Gaza since late May, when Israel began easing a more than two-month blockade on deliveries.UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said most of the deaths occurred near facilities operated by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.”We’ve recorded now 798 killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the GHF sites,” from the time the group’s operations began in late May until July 7, Shamdasani said on Friday. An officially private effort, GHF operations have been marred by chaotic scenes and frequent reports of Israeli forces firing on people waiting to collect rations.UN agencies and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the foundation over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives and violates basic humanitarian principles.Responding to the UN’s figures, Israel’s military said it had worked to minimise “possible friction between the population and the (army) as much as possible”.”Following incidents in which harm to civilians who arrived at distribution facilities was reported, thorough examinations were conducted… and instructions were issued to forces in the field following lessons learned,” it said.Gaza civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir said that 10 people were shot by Israeli forces on Friday while waiting for supplies in the Al-Shakoush area northwest of Rafah, where there have been repeated reports of deadly fire on aid seekers. – ‘Extremely difficult’ -In an update, the civil defence agency reported a wave of Israeli air strikes, drone attacks and bombings across the densely populated territory, which has been devastated by 21 months of war.There was no immediate comment on the latest strikes from the Israeli military, which has recently expanded its operations across Gaza.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 and other parties.A Palestinian speaking to AFP from southern Gaza on condition of anonymity reported ongoing attacks and widespread devastation, with Israeli tanks seen near Khan Yunis.”The situation remains extremely difficult in the area — intense gunfire, intermittent air strikes, artillery shelling, and ongoing bulldozing and destruction of displacement camps and agricultural land to the south, west and north of Al-Maslakh,” an area to Khan Yunis’s south, the witness said.The Israeli military said its soldiers were operating in the area, dismantling “terrorist infrastructure sites, both above and below ground”, and seizing “weapons and military equipment”.The civil defence also reported five people killed in an Israeli strike the previous night on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia al-Nazla, in northern Gaza. Nearly all of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during the war, which has created dire humanitarian conditions for the territory’s more than two million inhabitants.Many have sought shelter in school buildings, but these have come under repeated Israeli attack, with the military often saying it was targeting Hamas militants hiding among civilians.bur-mib-phz-acc/kir

PKK militants want to enter Turkish politics: top commander

Kurdish militants want to return to Turkey and enter mainstream politics, one of the PKK’s joint leaders told AFP on Friday after the group’s fighters began destroying their arms at a ceremony in Iraq.Speaking to AFP after handing in her own weapon alongside 29 of her comrades, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s top female commander Bese Hozat said if Turkey were willing, the disarmament process could be completed very quickly. But the 47-year-old militant also warned the fragile peace process risked being derailed if Ankara fails to free the PKK’s jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan, also known as ‘Apo’ — Kurdish for ‘uncle’.”If Apo were freed tomorrow and… Turkey made legal and constitutional arrangements the next day, within a week we could return to engage in democratic politics,” she said of a process which Ankara expects to last for months. Ocalan has been serving a life sentence in solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali near Istanbul since 1999 and his release has been a constant demand of the PKK. – ‘We miss him very much’ – “Ensuring leader Apo’s physical freedom legally, via legal guarantees, is essential…  he should be able to freely lead and manage this process. This is our primary condition and demand,” she said. “We want to see him, we miss him very much and there are many things we want to discuss with him,” said Hozat, who joined the PKK when she was 16 and has spent more than three decades of her life as a fighter. “Without this development, it is highly unlikely that the process will continue successfully.”Earlier this week, the 76-year-old dismissed talk of his own release as unimportant, positioning himself more as a guide than as a leader of the ongoing process. Hozat said it was essential Turkey put in place mechanisms to allow them to return without fear of prosecution or reprisal. “We do not want to wage armed struggle against Turkey, we want to come to Turkey and do democratic politics. In order for us… to achieve democratic integration with Turkey, it is imperative we can freely travel to Turkey,” she said. “If Turkey takes concrete steps, enacts laws and implements radical legal reforms… we will go to Turkey and engage in politics. If (not)… we will end up either in prison or being killed.”- ‘The PKK no longer exists’ -Asked whether she now expected Turkey and its Western allies to remove the PKK from their blacklists of terrorist organisations, Hozat said the issue was irrelevant. “Right now, the PKK no longer exists, we’ve dissolved it. We are a freedom movement.. advocating for peace and a democratic society.”The PKK has achieved its main goal: the existence of the Kurds has been recognised.” Seen as the world’s largest stateless people, the Kurds were left without a country when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I. Although most live in Turkey, where they make up around a fifth of the population, the Kurds are also spread across Iraq, Iran and Syria, where Ankara has for years been striking Kurdish fighters. Hozat hailed positive changes in Syria since the PKK announced the end of its armed struggle against Turkey.”Turkish attacks on (Kurdish-majority) northeastern Syria have ceased and its autonomous administration is currently negotiating” with the Damascus government.Hozat said the Kurdish question was the key to freedom for all peoples of the Middle East. “If the Kurdish question is resolved, the Middle East can truly become a democracy,” she said. “That’s why we want this solution everywhere, including Iran, which must also become democratic. The Kurdish question must also be resolved there on the basis of autonomy.”