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SvennoJ on 08 February 2025
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Palestinian man says Israeli forces beat him prior to son’s release

Fakhri Barghouti winced in pain as an ecstatic crowd lifted him onto their shoulders alongside his son Shadi, who was freed from an Israeli prison on Saturday as part of a Gaza ceasefire agreement.

The night before, Israeli forces stormed his family home in the occupied West Bank village of Kobar, warning him not to celebrate his son’s release and assaulting him, he said.

“They entered after midnight, smashed everything, took me into a side room and beat me before leaving,” Barghouti told AFP.

“I was taken to the hospital, where they found that I had a broken rib.”


Rights group says released most prisoners suffer health issues

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society advocacy group says most of the prisoners released by Israel in the continuing ceasefire deal suffer from health problems.

“Today, after 183 prisoners were released in the fifth batch of the first phase, the prisoners’ bodies and their health conditions, and the need for some of them to be transferred to the hospital, reflected the level of atrocities that the prisoners were exposed to over the past period in the occupation prisons,” it said.

“In addition to all this, we remind you that the occupation did not stop at its crimes against prisoners, but also practised organised terrorism against their families.”

The Prisoner’s Society noted that there were still more than 10,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons, and the number did not include all the people detained in Gaza.


Gaza at risk from ‘mind-boggling’ amount of unexploded ordnance, aid group warns

Unexploded bombs and shells buried in the ruins of Gaza could kill or injure thousands of people in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory in the future, an aid organisation has warned.

The volume of ordnance dropped by Israel on Gaza during 15 months of conflict was “mind-boggling”, said Simon Elmont, a de-mining expert with Handicap International – Humanity & Inclusion.

“The amount of ordnance that has been fired is an enormous quantity,” Elmont told the AFP news agency, adding that between nine and 13 percent of munitions fail to explode on initial impact.

“It is going to be tens of thousands of unexploded ordnance, that’s for sure,” he added.

He said that the contamination level in Gaza was massive, and much of the ordnance “lies mainly within the rubble and underneath the surface of Gaza”.


UNRWA calls for more support in occupied West Bank

Director of UNRWA Affairs for the occupied West Bank says that, despite “immense challenges”, the UN agency is continuing its work of delivering aid and health services to displaced Palestinians in Jenin and Tulkarm camps.

“Urgent support is needed,” Roland Friedrich posted on X.

The Israeli military began an offensive two days after a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, targeting Jenin city, its refugee camp and other towns including Tulkarm, killing 25 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.