Israeli Forces Storm Shelters, Detain Men, as North Gaza Raid Deepens

Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. (AFP)
Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. (AFP)
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Israeli Forces Storm Shelters, Detain Men, as North Gaza Raid Deepens

Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. (AFP)
Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. (AFP)

Israeli forces blew up homes and besieged schools and shelters for displaced people on Monday as they deepened their operations in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, residents and medics said.

They also rounded up men and ordered women to leave the camp, they said.

Medics at the Indonesian Hospital told Reuters that Israeli troops stormed a school and detained the men before setting the facility ablaze. The fire reached the hospital generators and caused a power outage, they added.

Health officials said they refused orders by the Israeli army, which began a new incursion into the north of the Palestinian territory over two weeks ago, to evacuate the three hospitals in the area or leave the patients unattended.

Troops remained outside the hospital but did not enter, they said. Medics at a second hospital, Kamal Adwan, reported heavy Israeli fire near the hospital at night.

"The army is burning the schools next to the hospital, and no one can enter or leave the hospital," said one nurse at the Indonesian Hospital, who asked not to be named.

Palestinian health officials said 18 people had been killed in Jabalia and eight elsewhere in Gaza in Israeli strikes.

The Israeli military said troops were continuing ground operations across the Gaza Strip. It said in a statement that over the past day, troops had dismantled militant infrastructure and tunnel shafts and killed fighters in the Jabalia area. It did not comment on the immediate situation regarding the hospitals and camps.

Israel has intensified its campaigns both in Gaza and Lebanon days after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar raised hopes of an opening for ceasefire talks to end more than a year of conflict.

Israel has vowed to eradicate the Hamas movement who formerly controlled Gaza, but in doing so has laid waste to much of the territory and killed tens of thousands of people. More than 1.9 million people have been left homeless amid a humanitarian crisis.

RUNNING OUT

Hadeel Obeid, a supervisor nurse at the Indonesian hospital, where 32 patients are currently being treated, said they were running out of medical supplies.

"Sterile gauze is going to finish and there are no medications to give them," she told Reuters via a chat app.

Obeid said the water supply has been cut off and there was food for the fourth consecutive day. She appealed to international organizations to take action to save the wounded.

The United Nations said it had been unable to reach the three hospitals in northern Gaza. It demanded access to allow aid into northern Gaza areas.

The UN Human Rights Office said it was "increasingly concerned that the manner in which the Israeli military is conducting hostilities in North Gaza, along with unlawful interference with humanitarian assistance and orders that are leading to forced displacement, may be causing the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza's northernmost governate through death and displacement".

Israel says it is getting large quantities of humanitarian supplies into Gaza with land deliveries and airdrops. It also says it has facilitated the evacuation of patients from the Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Palestinians say no aid entered northern Gaza areas where the operation is active.

Residents and medics said Israeli forces had tightened their siege on Jabalia, the largest of the enclave's eight historic refugee camps, which it encircled by sending tanks to the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and issuing evacuation orders to residents.

"We are facing death by bombs, by thirst and hunger," said Raed, a resident of Jabalia camp. "Jabalia is being wiped out and there is no witness to the crime, the world is blinding its eyes,"

Israeli officials said evacuation orders were aimed at separating Hamas fighters from civilians and denied there was any systematic plan to clear civilians out of Jabalia or other northern areas. It said forces operating in northern Gaza killed scores of Hamas gunmen and dismantled infrastructure

Hamas accused Israel of carrying out acts of "genocide and ethnic cleansing" against the people of northern Gaza to force them to leave.

The Hamas armed wing said fighters attacked forces there with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire, and detonated already planted bombs against troops inside tanks and stationed in houses.

Elsewhere in the enclave, Israeli strikes killed at least five people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and four in two separate strikes in Gaza City, medics said.

Sinwar was one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7, 2003, cross-border attack on Israeli communities that killed around 1,200 people, with another 253 taken back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent war has devastated Gaza, killing more than 42,500 Palestinians, with another 10,000 uncounted dead thought to lie under the rubble, Gaza health authorities say.



UN: At Least 15 Children Killed in Sudan Drone Strike

The war in Sudan, ongoing since mid-April 2023, has caused extensive destruction across the country (AFP)
The war in Sudan, ongoing since mid-April 2023, has caused extensive destruction across the country (AFP)
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UN: At Least 15 Children Killed in Sudan Drone Strike

The war in Sudan, ongoing since mid-April 2023, has caused extensive destruction across the country (AFP)
The war in Sudan, ongoing since mid-April 2023, has caused extensive destruction across the country (AFP)

A drone strike on a displacement camp in Sudan killed at least 15 children earlier this week, the United Nations reported late on Wednesday.

"On Monday 16 February, at least 15 children were reportedly killed and 10 wounded after a drone strike on a displacement camp in Al Sunut, West Kordofan," the UN children's agency said in a statement.

Across the Kordofan region, currently the Sudan war's fiercest battlefield, "we are seeing the same disturbing patterns from Darfur -- children killed, injured, displaced and cut off from the services they need to survive," UNICEF's Executive Director Catherine Russell said.


MSF Will Keep Operating in Gaza 'as Long as We Can'

(FILES) A Palestinian man walks on his crutches to the Doctors Without Borders or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) clinic, in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on new year's Eve, December 31, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
(FILES) A Palestinian man walks on his crutches to the Doctors Without Borders or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) clinic, in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on new year's Eve, December 31, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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MSF Will Keep Operating in Gaza 'as Long as We Can'

(FILES) A Palestinian man walks on his crutches to the Doctors Without Borders or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) clinic, in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on new year's Eve, December 31, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
(FILES) A Palestinian man walks on his crutches to the Doctors Without Borders or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) clinic, in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on new year's Eve, December 31, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

The head of Doctors Without Borders in the Palestinian territories told AFP the charity would continue working in Gaza for as long as possible, following an Israeli decision to end its activities there.

In early February, Israel announced it was terminating all the activities in Gaza by the medical charity, known by its French acronym MSF, after it failed to provide a list of its Palestinian staff.

MSF has slammed the move, which takes effect on March 1, as a "pretext" to obstruct aid.

"For the time being, we are still working in Gaza, and we plan to keep running our operations as long as we can," Filipe Ribeiro told AFP in Amman, but said operations were already facing challenges.

"Since the beginning of January, we are not anymore in the capacity to get international staff inside Gaza. The Israeli authorities actually denied any entry to Gaza, but also to the West Bank," he said.

Ribeiro added that MSF's ability to bring medical supplies into Gaza had also been impacted.

"They're not allowed for now, but we have some stocks in our pharmacies that will allow us to keep running operations for the time being," he said.

"We do have teams in Gaza that are still working, both national and international, and we have stocks."

In December, Israel announced it would prevent 37 aid organizations, including MSF, from working in Gaza from March 1 for failing to submit detailed information about their Palestinian employees, drawing widespread condemnation from NGOs and the United Nations.

It had alleged that two MSF employees had links with Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which the medical charity has repeatedly and vehemently denied.

MSF says it did not provide the names of its Palestinian staff because Israeli authorities offered no assurances regarding their safety.

Ribeiro warned of the massive impact the termination of MSF's operations would have for healthcare in war-shattered Gaza.

"MSF is one of the biggest actors when it comes to the health provision in Gaza and the West Bank, and if we are obliged to leave, then we will create a huge void in Gaza," he said.

The charity says it currently provides at least 20 percent of hospital beds in the territory and operates around 20 health centers.

In 2025 alone, it carried out more than 800,000 medical consultations, treated more than 100,000 trauma cases and assisted more than 10,000 infant deliveries.


Egyptian-Turkish Military Talks Focus on Strengthening Partnership

The Commander of the Egyptian Air Force during his meeting with the Turkish Air Force chief in Cairo on Wednesday (Egyptian military spokesperson)
The Commander of the Egyptian Air Force during his meeting with the Turkish Air Force chief in Cairo on Wednesday (Egyptian military spokesperson)
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Egyptian-Turkish Military Talks Focus on Strengthening Partnership

The Commander of the Egyptian Air Force during his meeting with the Turkish Air Force chief in Cairo on Wednesday (Egyptian military spokesperson)
The Commander of the Egyptian Air Force during his meeting with the Turkish Air Force chief in Cairo on Wednesday (Egyptian military spokesperson)

Senior Egyptian and Turkish air force commanders met in Cairo on Wednesday for talks focused on strengthening military partnership and expanding bilateral cooperation, in the latest sign of warming defense ties between the two countries.

The meeting brought together the Commander of the Egyptian Air Force, Lt. Gen. Amr Saqr, and his Turkish counterpart, Gen. Ziya Cemal Kadioglu, to review a range of issues of mutual interest amid growing cooperation between the two air forces.

Egypt’s military spokesperson said the talks reflect the Armed Forces’ commitment to deepening military collaboration with friendly and partner nations.

Earlier this month, Egypt and Türkiye signed a military cooperation agreement during talks in Cairo between Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Sisi highlighted similar viewpoints on regional and international issues, while Erdogan noted that enhanced cooperation and forthcoming joint steps would help support regional peace.

Cairo and Ankara also signed an agreement last August on the joint production of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones. Production of unmanned ground vehicles has also begun under a partnership between the Turkish firm HAVELSAN and Egypt’s Kader Factory.

During the talks, Saqr underscored the importance of coordinating efforts to advance shared interests and expressed hope for closer ties that would benefit both air forces.

Kadioglu, for his part, stressed the depth of bilateral partnership and the strong foundations of cooperation between the two countries’ air forces.

According to the military spokesperson, Kadioglu also toured several Egyptian Air Force units to review the latest training and armament systems introduced in recent years.

Military cooperation between Egypt and Türkiye has gained momentum since 2023, following the restoration of full diplomatic relations and reciprocal presidential visits that reflected positively on the defense sector.

In September last year, the joint naval exercise “Sea of Friendship 2025” was held in Turkish territorial waters, aimed at enhancing joint capabilities and exchanging expertise against a range of threats.