UNRWA Head Seeks Investigation into Killing of Staff in Gaza Warhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5257197-unrwa-head-seeks-investigation-killing-staff-gaza-war
UNRWA Head Seeks Investigation into Killing of Staff in Gaza War
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini attends a press conference on the last day of his mandate at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 31, 2026. (Reuters)
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UNRWA Head Seeks Investigation into Killing of Staff in Gaza War
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini attends a press conference on the last day of his mandate at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 31, 2026. (Reuters)
Discussions are under way for a UN investigation into the killing of more than 390 employees in the two-year Gaza war, the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency said on Tuesday, making it the deadliest conflict in the body's history.
"I believe that we need to have a panel – a high-level panel of experts to look into the killing of our staff," said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General at a press conference in Geneva on the last day of his term.
The topic has been raised with the office of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and with member states in New York, he added.
"Part of the reason this has not (been) operationalized yet is there is still an ongoing conflict," he added, referring to Israel's continuing airstrikes in the enclave despite an October ceasefire that ended the Israel-Hamas war.
More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, according to local health officials, following an attack on Israel by Hamas-led gunmen in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
Lazzarini, who will be replaced temporarily by Britain's Christian Saunders, warned earlier this month that his organization's viability was in doubt and that any collapse would result in Israel taking over its humanitarian work.
UN Peacekeeping Force Says Shots Fired at Post on Lebanon-Israel Borderhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5327179-un-peacekeeping-force-says-shots-fired-post-lebanon-israel-border
UNIFIL currently has 7,500 blue helmets from around 50 countries. (Reuters)
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UN Peacekeeping Force Says Shots Fired at Post on Lebanon-Israel Border
UNIFIL currently has 7,500 blue helmets from around 50 countries. (Reuters)
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said one of its posts was targeted on Wednesday near the border with Israel by small-arms fire, but there were no casualties.
"This morning, several rounds of small arms fire impacted a UNIFIL position near Kfar Shouba along the Blue Line in Sector East," the UN force said in a statement, referring to the de facto border between Lebanon and Israel.
The blue helmets described the shooting as "unacceptable".
"Such deliberate attacks gravely endanger the lives of peacekeepers," it said, adding that it was investigating the incident.
Under US pressure, the UN Security Council decided in August to fix December as the end of the mandate for UNIFIL, which has been deployed since 1978.
Last month, Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam insisted at the UN on the need to "avert the vacuum" that would be caused by withdrawing the peacekeeping mission deployed in the country's south without a viable replacement.
UNIFIL currently has 7,500 blue helmets from around 50 countries.
Violence has decreased since a ceasefire following a memorandum of understanding in the US-Iran war struck in June, while Lebanon and Israel concluded a US-sponsored framework agreement later that month.
The Lebanon-Israel deal involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon's south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in test areas known as "pilot zones".
Israelis Mark Three Years Since October 7 as Palestinians Mourn Gaza’s Destructionhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5327168-israelis-mark-three-years-october-7-palestinians-mourn-gaza%E2%80%99s-destruction
A Palestinian man works amid the rubble of a building damaged during the war, overlooking a makeshift tent camp at the Islamic University, in Gaza City, October 3, 2026. (Reuters)
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Israelis Mark Three Years Since October 7 as Palestinians Mourn Gaza’s Destruction
A Palestinian man works amid the rubble of a building damaged during the war, overlooking a makeshift tent camp at the Islamic University, in Gaza City, October 3, 2026. (Reuters)
Israelis gathered in silence on Wednesday in a kibbutz near the Gaza border that was overrun by Hamas on October 7 three years ago, mourning victims of attacks that set off Israel's assault in Gaza and plunged the Middle East into war.
In the Gaza Strip, devastated by three years of Israeli bombardment, Palestinians sheltering among the ruins of destroyed cities recalled life before a war that displaced nearly the entire population and tore apart families.
The attacks of October 7, 2023, were the deadliest day in Israel's history. Militants led by Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, a cross-border incursion that traumatized Israelis who have demanded government accountability.
Israel's subsequent bombardment and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 74,000 people, including at least 1,400 killed in the past year since a US-brokered ceasefire, which halted major fighting but has failed to stop Israeli attacks or secure the disarmament of Hamas.
Palestinian children walk amid the rubble of buildings destroyed during the war in Gaza City, October 7, 2026. (Reuters)
'A VERY DIFFICULT DAY'
In Kfar Aza, where Hamas fighters killed dozens of Israelis before taking 19 hostages back into Gaza, residents held a vigil for those killed, standing in silence as a trumpet played a solemn bugle call. A resident read out a roll call of the dead.
Zion Regev, a community leader in the kibbutz, said most residents remain displaced and have yet to return, the trauma of October 7 continuing to shape their lives.
"This is the first time we are doing all the things here in the kibbutz," Regev said of the vigil. "It's a very emotional day, it's a very difficult day for our community, three years after October 7th."
Elsewhere in Israel, protesters against what they view as a lack of accountability for the security failure gathered outside parliament in Jerusalem, blaming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for refusing an independent inquiry into the attack.
Some protesters held signs reading: "The people will remember October 7 on October 27," a reference to an Israeli general election 20 days away that is being viewed as a referendum on Netanyahu's long tenure in power.
"We need the change and we need hope and we need to know that we have a government that cares about the public and doesn't work also only for themselves," said protester Shaked Arrad.
Netanyahu has rejected blame for the security breach and resisted calls for an independent investigation. That has frustrated many in Israel, including families of those killed in the attacks, some of whom have joined the election race.
In a statement released by his office, Netanyahu said: "The nation unites on this day in the longing for our dear ones."
Referring to his country's ongoing attacks in Gaza, he added: "We will complete the mission: we have settled the score and will continue settling the score with all the murderers."
Election polls show neither Netanyahu nor his main competitors would muster enough seats in parliament to form a coalition if a vote were held today.
People carrying Israeli flags walk through a commemorative installation set up on the beach in Tel Aviv to mark the third anniversary of Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, on October 7, 2026. (AFP)
DISPLACED GAZANS RECALL LIFE BEFORE ISRAELI ASSAULT
The anniversary is the first since the October 10, 2025, ceasefire deal, which has left Israel in control of around two-thirds of Gaza, where it has demolished remaining buildings and ordered residents out.
Hamas controls the remaining third of the territory, a narrow strip on the coast where the 2 million population mostly live in makeshift tents and bombed-out buildings.
In the latest violence, Gaza medics said on Wednesday Israel's military had carried out air strikes in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza and in Khan Younis in the south, killing at least two Palestinians and wounding others.
The Israeli military said it struck and killed two people it described as militants with Hamas, which did not immediately provide comment. The military did not provide comment on the strike in Khan Younis.
Umm Mohammad, a mother of five displaced from Gaza City and now living with her husband and children in a tent encampment in Deir Al-Balah, said the war had ripped her family apart.
"We were one happy family. The war displaced us. My son left Gaza, the other went to a separate tent, my daughters left with their husbands to other parts of the Strip and we rarely meet," she said.
On this day, she said, "we recall how happy, despite all problems, we were before the war broke out, destroying everything we loved."
Syria Says Northeast Pipeline Damaged in Sabotage Attackhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5327161-syria-says-northeast-pipeline-damaged-sabotage-attack
Syria Says Northeast Pipeline Damaged in Sabotage Attack
Security forces in Syria. (SANA file)
Syria's state petroleum company said on Wednesday that an oil pipeline in the country's northeast was damaged in a "sabotage attack", the third such incident in recent weeks.
Years of civil war before the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in late 2024 devastated Syria's oil, gas and electricity sectors, with the country becoming heavily reliant on imports to meet its needs.
In a statement, the Syrian Petroleum Company said the pipeline near "the Tal Hamis area in Al-Hasakeh Governorate was subjected to a sabotage attack at 6:00 am on Wednesday, October 7, resulting in damage to the pipeline".
It added that maintenance crews were working to "isolate the damaged section and begin repair and maintenance work".
The company said authorities arrested the alleged perpetrators and referred them to the judiciary.
On September 29, sabotage targeting a gas pipeline in eastern Syria caused an explosion, according to state news agency SANA.
In early October, an explosion at a gas pipeline near the capital Damascus took three power stations offline.
The incidents come after demonstrations last month over rising fuel prices, which authorities linked to price hikes caused by the Middle East war.
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