Israelis hit house in northern Gaza, one of multiple strikes leaving at least 33 dead
Israeli forces killed at least 33 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, including a rescue worker, health officials said, as Israeli troops deepened an incursion along the territory’s northern edge, bombarding a hospital and blowing up homes.
Medics said at least 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the area of Jabalia in northern Gaza earlier on Wednesday, and at least 10 people remained missing as rescue operations continued. Another man was killed in tank shelling nearby, they said.
Later on Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike killed seven Palestinians, including a girl, in Al-Mawasi, a humanitarian-designated area in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Gaza medics said. Palestinian and UN officials say no place in the enclave is safe.
Another airstrike on a house in Remal neighbourhood in Gaza City killed four people, while a strike killed three Palestinians and wounded at least 20 others at a school sheltering displaced families in central Gaza Strip, medics said.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, said the hospital “was bombed across all its departments without warning, as we were trying to save an injured person in the intensive care unit” on Tuesday. The hospital is one of three medical facilities barely operational in the besieged northern area,
“Following the arrest of 45 members of the medical and surgical staff and the denial of entry to a replacement team, we are now losing wounded patients daily who could have survived if resources were available,” he told Reuters in a text message.
“Unfortunately, food and water are not allowed to enter, and not even a single ambulance is permitted access to the north.”
There were 85 injured people, including children and women, at the hospital, six in the ICU, the director said. Seventeen children had arrived with signs of malnutrition as a result of food shortages. One man died of dehydration a day ago, Abu Safiya added.
Israeli operations in Gaza have focused for weeks on the northern edge of the territory, where the military has laid siege to three major towns and ordered residents to flee.
Residents in the three towns — Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun — said forces had blown up dozens of houses. Palestinians say Israel appears determined to permanently depopulate the area to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza. Israel denies that allegation.
Israel’s 13-month campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,000 people and displaced nearly all the enclave’s population at least once. It was launched in response to an attack by Hamas-led fighters who killed 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Rescue worker killed in Gaza City
Months of attempts to negotiate a ceasefire have yielded scant progress and negotiations are now on ice, with mediator Qatar having suspended its efforts until the sides are prepared to make concessions.
Although Israel’s assaults have been focused on the towns on the northern edge since last month, its strikes have continued across the territory.
In the Sabra suburb of Gaza City, the Palestinian civil emergency service said an Israeli airstrike targeted one of its teams during a rescue operation, killing one staff member and wounding three others. In the nearby Zeitoun neighbourhood, an Israeli strike on a house killed two people, medics said.
Aid groups in Gaza say the food crisis is continually getting worse and the limited supplies aren’t getting to those who need them. Israel says there is enough food and few people are going hungry — despite evidence to the contrary.
The death in Sabra raises the number of civil emergency service members killed since Oct 7, 2023, to 87, the service said.
There was no immediate Israeli comment on the incidents.
In Rafah, in the south, medics said three men were killed and others wounded in two separate Israeli airstrikes.
U.S. vetoes UN ceasefire resolution
On Wednesday, the United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution for a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza, accusing council members of cynically rejecting attempts at reaching a compromise.
The 15-member council voted on a resolution put forward by its 10 non-permanent members in a meeting that called for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire,” and it separately demand the release of hostages.
Only the U.S. voted against, using its veto as a permanent council member to block the resolution.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has denied the existence of Palestinians. Former Canadian ambassadors Arif Lalani and Jon Allen discuss how that changes the calculations in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Hamas’ acting Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya said that there would be no hostages-for-prisoners swap deal with Israel unless the war in the Palestinian enclave ended.
“Without an end to the war, there can be no prisoner swap,” Hayya said in an interview with Al-Aqsa TV released on Wednesday.
“If the aggression is not ended, why would the resistance — and in particular Hamas — return the prisoners [hostages]?” he said. “How would a sane or an insane person lose a strong card he owns while the war is continuing?”
Hamas, Israel blame each other for stalled talks
Hayya, who led the group’s negotiating team in talks with Qatari and Egyptian mediators, blamed the lack of progress on Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in turn holds the Islamist group responsible for the stalled talks.
“There are contacts under way with some countries and mediators to revive this file [negotiation]. We are ready to continue with those efforts but it is more important to see a real will on the side of the occupation to end the aggression,” said Hayya.
“The reality proves that Netanyahu is the one who undermines it [negotiations],” he added.
Speaking during a visit to Gaza on Tuesday, Netanyahu said that Hamas would not rule the Palestinian enclave after the war had ended and that Israel had destroyed the Islamist group’s military capabilities.
Netanyahu also said Israel had not given up trying to locate the 101 remaining hostages believed to still be in the enclave, and he offered a $5-million US reward for the return of each one.
Hamas wants a deal that ends the war, while Netanyahu has vowed the war can end only once Hamas is eradicated.
Published at Wed, 20 Nov 2024 14:24:17 +0000
Alec Baldwin’s Rust premieres in Poland with dedication to Halyna Hutchins
Alec Baldwin’s Western Rust had its world premiere Wednesday at a film festival in Poland with a dedication to cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was fatally shot in an accident on the set three years ago.
Organizers called for a minute of silence before showing the film, which opened to a full house at the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography Camerimage in the city of Torun, and received applause at the end.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer, was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal outside Santa Fe, N.M., in October 2021 when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the revolver fired.
Souza introduced the film at the festival, a popular industry event dedicated to cinematography. He told the audience that initially after the accident he could not have imagined continuing with the production, or even working on a movie set or writing again.
“It just hurt too much,” he said.
But Hutchins’s husband, Matthew, wanted the film to be finished, and came on as an executive producer.
“It was important to him that the people who knew and loved Halyna get to see her final work,” Souza said. The mission became “to preserve every single frame that I could of hers, and to honour her final work.”
Rust is the story of a 13-year-old boy who is sentenced to be hanged after he fatally shoots a rancher by accident. He goes on the run with his estranged grandfather, played by Baldwin. It includes scene after scene of shootouts.
Bianca Cline, the cinematographer who finished the project, said Hutchins established the look and feel of the film, and filmed more than half of it. She studied Hutchins’s notes to honour her vision.
Hutchins, 42, was a Ukrainian cinematographer on the rise and a mother of a young son. She grew up on a remote Soviet military base and worked on documentary films in Eastern Europe before studying film in Los Angeles and embarking on a promising movie-making career.
Shooting victim’s mother refused to attend
Ahead of the premiere, Hutchins’s mother Olga Solovey, who is suing Baldwin and the production, said she was refusing to attend and that she viewed the film as an attempt by Baldwin to “unjustly profit” from her daughter’s death. Baldwin was also not present.
“It was always my hope to meet my daughter in Poland to watch her work come alive on screen. Unfortunately, that was ripped away from me when Alec Baldwin discharged his gun and killed my daughter,” Solovey said in a statement issued by her lawyer, Gloria Allred, and sent to CBC News.
“Alec Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologize to me and his refusal to take responsibility for her death. Instead, he seeks to unjustly profit from his killing of my daughter. That is the reason why I refuse to attend the festival for the promotion of Rust, especially now when there is still no justice for my daughter.”
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed charges of involuntary manslaughter against actor Alec Baldwin, in New Mexico. His defence lawyers accused Santa Fe law enforcement of hiding evidence of the source of the live round that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021, failing to list the rounds in the Rust investigation file or inform the defence lawyers of their existence.
Melina Spadone, a representative for Rust Movie Productions, issued a statement saying: “Gloria Allred’s misrepresentation of both the Camerimage festival and any profit motivation is disappointing. The decision to complete Rust was made with the full support of Halyna’s family.”
“The Camerimage festival celebrates the artistry of cinematographers; it is not a festival for buyers. None of the producers of Rust stand to benefit financially from the film. The suggestion that those involved in completing Halyna Hutchins’ film were motivated by profit is disrespectful to those who worked tirelessly to honour her legacy.”
‘Rust was going to change her life’: friend
Filmmaker Rachel Mason, a friend of Hutchins who was tapped by Matthew Hutchins to make a documentary about his late wife, told the audience that Solovey told her that she wanted the film to be completed because of how important the project was to her daughter.
Mason also described all those who continued to work on the film after the tragedy on set as “heroic.”
“You could just feel and see the trauma that they had gone through,” she said.
“Halyna didn’t get the chance to do the biggest films that she was expected to do, that we all knew she would. Rust was that film. Rust was going to change her life but instead it took her life. And the people that feel the pain of that most are the people that made the film,” Mason said.
“I really hope the world can understand that it was a courageous act to complete this film.”
A New Mexico judge dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin in the fatal shooting. The case was thrown out halfway through trial on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defence.
The film armourer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, received the maximum sentence of 18 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter. A judge found that her recklessness amounted to a serious violent offence.
Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of Rust, where it was expressly prohibited, and for failing to follow basic gun-safety protocols.
Published at Wed, 20 Nov 2024 20:38:25 +0000
