An Israeli soldier moves on the top of a tank near the Israeli-Gaza border, as seen from southern Israel, Sunday, July 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

An Israeli drone strike on a car Monday near the Lebanon-Syria border killed a prominent Syrian businessman who was sanctioned by the United States and had close ties to the government of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, according to pro-government media and an official from an Iran-backed group.

For years, Israel has launched frequent strikes on targets in Syria linked to Iran, its powerful regional backer, but rarely acknowledges them. The strikes have escalated over the past five months against the backdrop of the war in Gaza and ongoing clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border.

Hamas said Sunday that Gaza cease-fire talks were ongoing and the group’s military commander was in good health, a day after the Israeli military targeted Mohammed Deif with a massive airstrike that local health officials said killed at least 90 people, including children.

Deif’s condition was still unclear after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night “there still isn’t absolute certainty” he was killed, and Hamas representatives gave no evidence to back up their assertion about the health of a chief architect of the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war with militants storming into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting about 250.

Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,400 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into squalid tent camps in central and southern Gaza. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine.

Here’s the latest:

United Nations says it's trying to bring community policing to Gaza as lack of order prevents aid work

UNITED NATIONS — The almost $5,000 cost of a carton of cigarettes — and $25 cost of a single cigarette — smuggled into Gaza is a symptom of the lack of law and order in the war-torn territory and the need for the restoration of community policing, said Scott Anderson, the U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator for the Gaza Strip.

“We’ve seen a complete breakdown of law and order and we’ve seen essentially crime families preventing the free movement of aid into Gaza to assist people,” he said. “A lot of this is due to smuggling. It’s not people that are simply hungry and thirsty and looking for aid.”

Israel controls all of Gaza’s border crossings.

Gaza, like every other place in the world, needs policing and the United Nations is working to try to bring community policing back, Anderson told U.N. correspondents in a video briefing from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Monday.

“And I’m quite confident if we can do that it will address many of the issues that we have,” he said.

Anderson said the lawlessness problem began in February when local police were told to stay at home, and it was exacerbated when Israel started its offensive in Rafah and the border with Egypt was closed.

“One of the things that I think we all find frustrating here is that after nine months what people need remains the same as what they needed when the war began: It’s very basic food, water medicine, hygiene kits,” he said.

Between 25 and 75 trucks are getting into northern Gaza every day, he said, but no commercial goods because of a security issue, far below the number needed. In the south, he said the U.N. has been barely able to get 100 trucks in on a good day in the last week because of law and order problems.

“The commercial sector is doing a little bit better, but they pay essentially protection money to the families in the south, and they also have armed guards,” Anderson said. By contrast, to preserve its neutrality the U.N. prohibits any armed guards traveling with convoys and relies on community policing.

European Council sanctions extremist Israeli settlers over West Bank violence and blocking Gaza aid

WASHINGTON — The European Council has slapped sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers and organizations over what it called “systematic human rights abuses” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and obstructing humanitarian aid from reaching desperately hungry Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The European Union's sanctions will freeze the assets of five people and three groups, and prohibit anyone from giving funding or economic resources to the groups or for their benefit, either directly or indirectly, the council said in a statement Monday.

The move follows U.S. sanctions on hard-line Israeli settlers who it accuses of undermining peace and stability in the occupied West Bank by encouraging or participating in violence against Palestinian civilians.

The targets of Monday's sanctions by the EU are Moshe Sharvit and his "Moshe’s Farm" in the West Bank, Zvi Bar Yosef and his outpost "Zvi’s Farm," Baruch Marzel, Isaschar Manne, and Ben-Zion “Bentzi” Gopstein, founder of Lehava, an umbrella group for settlers.

EU sanctions were also leveled Monday against Tzav 9, which has blocked roads in an effort to prevent the delivery of aid to Gaza. U.S. officials say the group has looted and set fire to trucks carrying aid through the West Bank.

In an escalation in recent months, West Bank settlers have carried out more than 1,000 attacks on Palestinians, causing deaths, damaging property and in some cases prompting Palestinians to flee villages.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements scattered across the West Bank. Settlers also have built scores of tiny unauthorized outposts that are tolerated or even encouraged by the government. Some are later legalized.

The European Council is the body that brings together the 28 EU countries’ leaders.

Palestinians in Gaza camps describe having little to eat and no money to provide for their families

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Months have passed since Palestinians in Gaza say they've had proper access to food or clean water, and with no end in sight to Israel’s war against Hamas, thousands are forced to rely on limited aid distribution and charity kitchens to survive.

At one makeshift kitchen in central Gaza's Deir al-Balah, children lined up in the hot sun Monday for a scoop of green beans in thin tomato sauce over a plate of rice. It’s a common meal in homes throughout the Arab world that usually includes hearty chunks of red meat, but here in Gaza the sauce is watery and there’s no meat to be found.

“For the last 10 months I haven’t tasted liver, I haven’t tasted meat, I haven’t tasted fruit — because they cost money,” said Aisha Matar, a 69-year-old woman displaced from Gaza City.

She spoke in the shade beside her white metal shipping-container-turned-shelter, with laundry hung out to dry in the light breeze. Like her, most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into tent camps in central and southern Gaza. The ongoing food insecurity is mainly the result of the lack of aid distribution and skyrocketing food prices caused by the war.

“Life is very expensive,” she said.

Experts warned last month that the entire Gaza Strip remains at “high risk” of famine, after Israel’s offensive into the southern city of Rafah displaced hundreds of thousands and disrupted most aid operations. United Nations agencies warned in June that more than 1 million people across the entire territory could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July if the war keeps going.

“We’re suffering from everything when it comes to water, food, money for the kids,” said one father, Abdul Rahim Ahmed, who was displaced from the Shati urban refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Sitting on mattresses in his family's metal container, he shared a plate of food with his two young sons. He says he can't afford basic needs. “We don’t have a source of income or a monthly salary or someone who could provide financial support.”

As of last month, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, known as UNRWA, estimated that over 50,000 children need medical treatment for acute malnutrition.

Hezbollah cancels upcoming religious rallies in southern Lebanon due to ongoing conflict with Israel

BEIRUT — The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah says that, because of the ongoing fighting with Israel, his Shiite group will not hold rallies in much of southern Lebanon this week commemorating the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein.

Ashoura is one of the most important dates on the Shiite calendar, but this year's solemn holy day comes as Hezbollah and Israeli troops have been exchanging fire on an almost daily basis since war broke out in Gaza.

Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech Monday night that no rallies would be held in an area that includes the port city of Tyre, the market town of Nabatiyeh, as well as the towns of Khiam and Bint Jbeil near the border with Israel.

His announcement came as Israel killed several civilians in an airstrike in Bint Jbeil on Monday night, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, which did not immediately provide further details.

Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have killed over 450 people, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also more than 80 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 17 civilians have been killed since the war in Gaza began.

Hezbollah annually holds rallies in different parts of Lebanon but the largest is in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which is usually attended by tens of thousands. Nasrallah gives a speech on the day that falls on the 10th day of the Muslim month of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, which this year coincides with Wednesday.

Millions of Shiite Muslims around the world commemorate Ashoura, marking the 7th-century martyrdom of Hussein that gave birth to their faith.

Israeli drone strike kills a prominent Syrian businessman with ties to Assad government, media and officials say

BEIRUT — An Israeli drone strike on a car Monday near the Lebanon-Syria border killed a prominent Syrian businessman who had been sanctioned by the United States and was close to the government of Syria's President Bashar Assad, pro-government media and other allied officials said.

Mohammed Baraa Katerji was killed instantly in his SUV on the highway linking Lebanon with Syria, according to an official from an Iran-backed group. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The pro-Syrian government newspaper Al-Watan quoted unnamed sources as saying Katerji was killed in a “Zionist drone strike on his car,” referring to Israel. It gave no further details.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, told The Associated Press by phone that he had no independent confirmation that Katerji was killed. He said it appeared Katerji may have been targeted because he had funded the Syrian resistance against Israel in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, as well as because of his links to Iran-backed groups in Syria.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Katerji in 2018 for allegedly working as Assad’s middleman to trade oil with with the Islamic State group and for facilitating weapons shipments from Iraq to Syria.

Katerji and his brother Hussam — widely referred to in Syria as the “Katerji brothers” — got involved in the oil business a few years after the country’s conflict began in March 2011.

For years, Israel has launched frequent strikes in Syria on targets linked to Iran, its powerful regional backer, but rarely acknowledges them. The strikes have escalated in recent months against the backdrop of the war in Gaza and ongoing clashes between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border.

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Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.

Israeli airstrike kills 3, including a baby and his grandmother, in central Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — A baby boy and his grandmother were killed by an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building Monday in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, hospital officials said. A man in the street was also killed and at least six people were wounded.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said on X , formerly Twitter, that 11 wounded people were taken to the hospital after the strike in the al-Salam neighborhood in western Deir al-Balah.

Associated Press footage showed a Red Crescent ambulance blaring its horn as it rushed the wounded up to the crowded entrance of Al Aqsa hospital. A man sat upright in a stretcher, blood running down his dust-covered face. Another man lay on his side, his skin peeled and burnt, but managed to point his index finger to the sky — a gesture used by Muslims to profess their faith in God. A wounded boy grimaced as he was carried inside.

At the hospital, the dead infant wearing only a diaper was placed on top of his grandmother's corpse, wrapped in a purple household blanket. Beside them lay another dead man, his head and torso obscured by a bloodstained white sheet.

Later, in the hospital courtyard, several dozen men performed funeral prayers in front of the grandmother and baby. As the mourners folded their arms across their chests, at least one man struggled to contain his emotions while wiping tears from his eyes.

Over the past 24 hours, at least 80 people were killed and 216 injured across the Gaza Strip and taken to hospitals, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. A total of 38,664 Palestinians have been killed and 89,097 were injured in the war since the war began in October, according to Gaza health officials. Gaza's does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels strikes a ship in the Red Sea

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels Monday targeted a ship in the Red Sea as a new American aircraft carrier approaches the region after the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower began heading home.

The captain reported that one uncrewed small craft hit twice and two other crewed vessels fired at the ship, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said, and that was followed by two separate waves of missile attacks, approximately 45 minutes apart, that exploded in close proximity to the vessel off the coast of Al Hudaydah, Yemen. The ship, whose name and flag were not released, and all crew are reported safe, the UKMTO said in a warning to mariners.

The Houthis did not immediately comment. However, it can take hours or even days before they acknowledge carrying out an attack.

The rebels have targeted more than 70 vessels by firing missiles and drones in their campaign that has killed four sailors. They seized one vessel and sank two since November.

The Houthis maintain that their attacks target ships linked to Israel, the United States or Britain as part of the rebels’ support for Hamas in its war against Israel. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the war — including some bound for Iran, which backs the Houthis.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024