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Borrel Demands Probe into Gaza Red Cross Office Shelling as Tens of Thousands Rally Against Israeli Govt.

Anti-government protest organization Hofshi Israel estimated more than 150,000 people attended the latest anti-government rally in Tel Aviv, calling it the biggest since the Gaza war began - AFP
Anti-government protest organization Hofshi Israel estimated more than 150,000 people attended the latest anti-government rally in Tel Aviv, calling it the biggest since the Gaza war began - AFP
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Borrel Demands Probe into Gaza Red Cross Office Shelling as Tens of Thousands Rally Against Israeli Govt.

Anti-government protest organization Hofshi Israel estimated more than 150,000 people attended the latest anti-government rally in Tel Aviv, calling it the biggest since the Gaza war began - AFP
Anti-government protest organization Hofshi Israel estimated more than 150,000 people attended the latest anti-government rally in Tel Aviv, calling it the biggest since the Gaza war began - AFP

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell on Saturday called for a probe into deadly shelling that damaged an office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Gaza.

"The EU condemns the shelling which damaged the ICRC office in Gaza and led to dozens of casualties. An independent investigation is needed and those responsible must be held accountable," Borrell wrote on X.

This came as tens of thousands of protesters waving Israeli flags and chanting slogans against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government rallied in Tel Aviv Saturday, demanding new elections and the return of hostages held in Gaza, AFP reported.

Large protests have occurred in the Israeli city on a weekly basis over Netanyahu's handling of the nearly nine-month-old war in Gaza started by Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel.

Many protesters held signs reading "Crime Minister" and "Stop the War" as people poured into the biggest Israeli city's main thoroughfare.

"I am here because I am afraid of the future of my grandchild. There will be no future for them if we don't go out and get rid of the horrible government," said 66-year-old contractor Shai Erel.

"All of the rats in the Knesset... I wouldn't let any one of them be a guard of a kindergarten."

Anti-government protest organization Hofshi Israel estimated more than 150,000 people attended the rally, calling it the biggest since the Gaza war began.

Some demonstrators lay on the ground covered in red paint in the city's Democracy Square to protest what they say is the death of the country's democracy under Netanyahu.

In an address to the crowd, a former head of Israel's domestic Shin Bet security agency, Yuval Diskin, condemned Netanyahu as Israel's "worst prime minister".

Many are frustrated with the country's right-wing coalition, which includes Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and other far-right ultra-nationalists, accusing it of prolonging the war in Gaza and putting the country's security and hostages at risk.

Yoram, a 50-year-old tour guide who declined to give his last name, said he was attending every weekly protest as Israel needed elections "yesterday" because of Netanyahu.

"I really hope that the government collapses," he said. "If we go to the original date of elections in 2026, it is not going to be a democratic election."

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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.