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Baby in Gaza saved from womb of mother killed in Israeli strike
By Mohammad Salem and Nidal al-Mughrabi
RAFAH, Gaza Strip/CAIRO (Reuters) -A baby girl was delivered from the womb of a Palestinian killed along with her husband and daughter by an Israeli attack in the Gaza city of Rafah, where 19 people died overnight in intensified strikes, Palestinian health officials said.
The dead, killed in hits on two houses, included 13 children from one family, they said.
The baby, weighing 1.4 kg (3.09 lb)and delivered in an emergency C-section, was stable and improving gradually, said Mohammed Salama, a doctor caring for her.
Her mother, Sabreen Al-Sakani, had been 30 weeks pregnant.
The baby was placed in an incubator in a Rafah hospital alongside another infant, with the words “The baby of the martyr Sabreen Al-Sakani” written on tape across her chest.
Sakani’s young daughter Malak, who was killed in the strike, had wanted to name her new sister Rouh, meaning spirit in Arabic, said her uncle Rami Al-Sheikh. “The little girl Malak was happy that her sister was coming to the world,” he said.
The baby would stay in hospital for three to four weeks, said Salama, the doctor. “After that we will see about her leaving, and where this child will go, to the family, to the aunt or uncle or grandparents. Here is the biggest tragedy. Even if this child survives, she was born an orphan,” he said.
The 13 children were killed in a strike on the second home, belonging to the Abdel Aal family, according to Palestinian health officials. Two women were also killed in that strike.
Asked about the casualties in Rafah, an Israeli military spokesperson said various militant targets were struck in Gaza including military compounds, launch posts and armed people.
“Did you see one man in all of those killed?” said Saqr Abdel Aal, a Palestinian man whose family were among the dead, grieving over the body of a child in a white shroud.
“All are women and children,” he said. “My entire identity has been wiped out, with my wife, children and everyone.”
Mohammad al-Behairi said his daughter and grandchild were still under the rubble. “It’s a feeling of sadness, depression, we have nothing left in this life to cry for, what feeling shall we have? When you lose your children, when you lose the closest of your loved ones, how will your feeling be?” he said.
‘WE ARE TRAPPED’
Over half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have crowded into Rafah, seeking shelter from the Israeli offensive that has laid waste to much of the Gaza Strip over the last six months.
Israel is threatening a ground offensive into the area, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said fighters from the militant group Hamas must be eliminated to ensure Israel’s victory in the war.
President Joe Biden has urged Israel not to launch a large-scale offensive in Rafah to avoid more Palestinian civilian casualties.
Palestinian health authorities say more than 34,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault, which began after Hamas fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and abducting another 253, according to Israeli tallies.
The Palestinian health ministry said on Sunday that Israeli military strikes killed 48 Palestinians and wounded 79 others across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said teams recovered 60 bodies from the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern of the enclave, weeks after Israeli army forces retreated from the medical complex. That raised to 210 the number of bodies it had dug out from the hospital yards since April 12.
The service said in a statement there were still around 2,000 missing persons under the rubble in Khan Younis and 1,000 in the central areas of the Gaza Strip, whose bodies could not be extracted because of a lack of heavy equipment and machinery
for rubble removal.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
In the larger of the two Palestinian territories, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Israel said its soldiers opened fire at three Palestinians who attacked them and the Palestinian health ministry said all three had died. Violence has flared in the West Bank in recent days.
(Reuters) – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation gave a fresh deadline of Feb. 10 to BlackRock (NYSE:) to resolve an issue regarding oversight into the firm’s stock in banks, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.
By Steven Scheer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel plans to use tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to pay the PA’s nearly 2 billion ($544 million) debt to state-run Israel Electric Co (IEC), Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday.
Israel collects tax on goods that pass through Israel into the occupied West Bank on behalf of the PA and transfers the revenue to Ramallah under a longstanding arrangement between the two sides.
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered the war in Gaza, Smotrich has withheld sums totalling 800 million shekels earmarked for administration expenses in Gaza.
Those frozen funds are held in Norway and, he said at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, would instead be used to pay debt owed to the IEC of 1.9 billion shekels.
“The procedure was implemented after several anti-Israeli actions and included Norway’s unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich told cabinet ministers.
“The PA’s debt to IEC resulted in high loans and interest rates, as well as damage to IEC’s credit, which were ultimately rolled over to the citizens of Israel.”
The Palestinian Finance Ministry said it had agreed for Norway to release a portion of funds from an account held since last January with 1.5 billion shekels, calling money in the account “a punitive measure linked to the government’s financial support for Gaza”.
The ministry said as part of the deal, 767 million shekels of the Norwegian-held funds will pay Israeli fuel companies for weekly fuel purchases over the coming months. A similar amount will be used to settle electricity-related debts owed by Palestinian distribution companies to IEC.
Smotrich has been opposed to sending funds to the PA, which uses the money to pay public sector wages. He accuses the PA of supporting the Oct. 7 attack in Israel led by the Islamist movement Hamas, which controlled Gaza. The PA is currently paying 50-60% of salaries.
Israel also deducts funds equal to the total amount of so-called martyr payments, which the PA pays to families of militants and civilians killed or imprisoned by Israeli authorities.
The Palestinian finance ministry said 2.1 billion shekels remain withheld by Israel, bringing the total withheld funds to over 3.6 billion shekels as of 2024.
Israel, it said, began deducting an average of 275 million shekels monthly from its tax revenues in October 2023, equivalent to the government’s monthly allocations for Gaza.
“This has exacerbated the financial crisis, as the government continues to transfer these allocations directly to the accounts of public servants in Gaza,” the ministry said.
It added it was working with international partners to secure the release of these funds as soon as possible.
($1 = 3.6763 shekels)
BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Romanians angered by the cancellation of a presidential election marched through Bucharest on Sunday to demand that the ballot should go ahead and that outgoing centrist President Klaus Iohannis should resign.
In a move that polarised voters, Romania’s top court voided the presidential election on Dec. 6, two days before the second round.
The cancellation came after state documents showed frontrunner Calin Georgescu, a critic of NATO, had benefited from an unfair social media campaign likely to have been orchestrated by Russia, accusations Moscow has denied.
The court ordered that the election be re-run in its entirety. The pro-European coalition government has yet to approve a calendar for the election, although party leaders agreed to hold the two rounds on May 4 and May 18.
Iohannis, whose term expired on Dec. 21, will stay on until his successor is elected.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of protesters, including left-wingers and those angered by the way the way the election was cancelled, joined the protest organised by the opposition hard-right Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), Romania’s second-largest party.
“We ask for a return to democracy by resuming the election with the second round,” AUR leader George Simion told reporters.
Organizers said 100,000 people were at the protest, but riot police along the march estimated the numbers at around 20,000. Protesters waved flags and shouted “Freedom” and “Bring back the second round.”
“Our right to vote was broken,” said Bogdan Danila, a 43-year-old truck driver. “In addition, Iohannis was in power for ten years and did nothing for the people, while parties betrayed us, they are all corrupt. We want something else.”
Some protesters carried portraits of Georgescu or Christian Orthodox icons while street vendors sold flags and vuvuzelas.
“Authorities must say why they cancelled the election, we want to see the evidence,” said Cornelia, 57, an economist wrapped in a Romanian flag who declined to give her last name.
“At this rate we won’t be voting anymore, they will impose a leader like in the old days.”
It remains unclear whether Georgescu, who opposes Romanian support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, will be allowed to run for president again.
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