Seven Israeli Soldiers Were Wounded in Gaza 😞

Seven Israeli soldiers were wounded in an explosion targeting an armoured vehicle in Gaza on Friday night, the Israel Defense Forces have said. 💥 The soldiers were wounded while operating in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, which has been the site of intense Israeli military activity in recent weeks. 🏚

Intense clashes in the area on Friday night were reported by Arab media, including Al Jazeera, which said that Hamas had attempted to kidnap some of the Israeli soldiers at the time of the explosion – reports the Israeli military said were false. 🚫

Israel declared Gaza City a “dangerous combat zone” on Friday, ending the daily humanitarian pauses that were meant to alleviate hunger there. 🚨

Gaza City is in the throes of famine, a result of an Israeli blockade that despite the pauses has choked off food and medical supplies into the territory. 🍽🩺

The Israeli defence ministry approved plans to occupy and take over Gaza City last week, and despite international and domestic opposition, is pushing ahead with the offensive. 🪖

Israel launched the war after Hamas-led militants carried out an attack in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. 😢

On Thursday, Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, warned that Israel’s plans to occupy Gaza City would increase the chances of the group capturing Israeli soldiers and that any Israeli military operation would put the lives of remaining hostages at risk. ⚠️

Israeli bombardments of the area have intensified in recent days, with the Israeli air force carrying out strikes on tent encampments in Zeitoun and the al-Nasr neighbourhood of Gaza City on Saturday morning, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. ✈️💣

At least 62 Palestinians had been killed across Gaza in the previous 24 hours, Gaza’s health authorities said. 😔

The renewed bombardment has already caused more than 23,000 residents of Gaza City to leave, the UN said on Thursday. 🏃‍♂️

Gaza City hosts nearly half of Gaza’s 2 million population and is in the grip of famine. The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that it would be impossible to keep these residents safe during a mass-displacement scenario. 🚨🌍

#israel #soldiers #war #gaza #wounded

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Johannesburg: 9 Killed, 10 Wounded, Cause Uncertain 🚫⚰️

Gunmen killed nine people and wounded 10 others in an attack at a township outside Johannesburg, police said on Sunday, in the second mass shooting in South Africa in December. 🦾

Police initially said 10 people were killed but later revised the toll. 📌

The motive for the attack at Bekkersdal, 25 miles south-west of Johannesburg, was not clear, police told Agence France-Presse.

“Some victims were randomly shot in the streets by unknown gunmen,” a police statement said. 🔥

The dead included a driver from an online car-hailing service who had been outside the bar, provincial police commissioner Maj Gen Fred Kekana told SABC television. 🚖

A manhunt for the attackers was launched, police said. 🕵️‍♂️

The shooting took place near an informal bar in Bekkersdal, an impoverished area near some of South Africa’s major goldmines. 🏯

The wounded were taken to hospital, police said. 🏥

South Africa is grappling with entrenched crime and corruption driven by organised networks. 💉

Shootings are common and often fuelled by gang violence and competition between informal businesses, contributing to one of the highest murder rates in the world. 🗡

On 6 December, gunmen stormed a hostel near the capital, Pretoria, killing a dozen people including a three-year-old child. Police said the shooting was at a site that was illegally selling alcohol. 🍻

#johannesburg #killed #wounded #police

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Iran’s Media War Against Trump and Netanyahu

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Iran’s regime has organised more than 850 public demonstrations of support of the government since the beginning of the war and launched a continuing crackdown on unrest that has led to at least 1,400 detentions, research reveals.

The high number of pro-regime gatherings and the increasing number of detentions underlines the resilience of the Islamic Republic despite a month-long campaign of intensive airstrikes by the US and Israel, experts said.

The war began with a surprise Israeli strike, which killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and many senior officials.

Israel has since continued to assassinate senior commanders, most recently Alireza Tangsiri, the naval commander of the Revolutionary Guards, who died in an attack on the port city of Bandar Abbas on Thursday.

“The US-Israeli decapitation strategy could not have been more successful and continues to be so (…) but the regime has not fragmented and there are no defections.

The messaging within Iran is how they are winning, and that is constant and consistent,” said Clionadh Raleigh, the president of Acled, an independent conflict monitor, which has built up a database of protest incidents and violence in the month-long conflict.

The Acled research also shows that the number of US and Israeli strikes on Iran has remained steady at between 47 and 102 attacks daily that have caused “significant” civilian casualties.

Acled uses multiple sources among Iranian, regional and international media and social media, as well as its own sources on the ground, to cross-check and verify reports of violence, which it then logs and sorts into categories.

Trump said earlier this week that the US had already achieved “regime change” in Iran, while Netanyahu has made repeated calls for the Iranian public to rise up and oust their leaders.

Many experts and officials in the US and Israel believe early forecasts of a mass revolt were misguided, however.

The third week of the conflict had the most sustained waves of mass public demonstrations in Iran in support of the regime.

Acled counted 195 pro-regime demonstrations from 28 February to 6 March, focused on mourning for Khamenei and condemning Israel and the US, then 158 in the following week and nearly 300 from 13-19 March, with celebrations of the succession of Mojtaba Khamenei prominent.

#iran #war #trump #netanyahu #wounded #deaths #teheran

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Details of such repression are difficult to obtain, but recent incidents include the deaths of 10 people when Revolutionary Guards fired on anti-regime demonstrators and shot at apartment windows in Tehran on 25 March, and three killed on 18 March in Chabahar when detainees protested over food ration cuts inside a prison.

On 17 March, security forces intervened against gatherings in Fardis and four Tehran districts when demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans, Acled said.

“It was only really on the first night of the death of Ali Khamenei that you saw any small level of anti-regime activism. Since, there has been a coordinated effort to have pro-Iran or anti-war protests,” said Raleigh.

Alia Brahimi, a regional expert with the Atlantic Council thinktank, said none of the pro-regime protests would have been spontaneous and showed how leadership structures in Iran had withstood the joint US-Israeli offensive.

“That leaders will be killed has long been accepted, and there has been decades of ideological conditioning to prepare Iranians to absorb the death of senior commanders,” Brahimi said.

“That moral effort has an organisational counterpart which has built resilience by making sure there are multiple replacements for anyone who holds a senior post, and by, more recently, decentralising decision-making. This is part of the Islamic Republic’s unique system and worldview.”

Estimates of civilian casualties vary. More than 1,900 people have been killed and at least 20,000 injured in Iran since the start of US and Israeli attacks, said María Martinez of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) on Friday, citing figures provided by the Iranian Red Crescent.

In January, large protests across Iran were bloodily put down, with 7,000 killed by security forces, according to HRANA. Three men accused of killing police officers during the protests were hanged in public earlier this month.

The unrest was the most serious internal threat to the radical clerical regime in Iran for more than 45 years.

Since war broke out a month ago, security forces have set up checkpoints throughout major cities and cut off the internet, one of the longest and largest outages recorded. Senior officials said on 16 March that 500 “spies” had been arrested.

“If anyone comes forward in line with the wishes of the enemy, we will no longer see them as merely a protester, we will see them as an enemy (…) And we will do to them what we do to an enemy,” said Ahmad-Reza Radan, the national police commander.

#iran #war #trump #netanyahu #wounded #deaths #teheran

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