11/05/2026

MONDAY | MAY 11, 2026

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Settlers force exhumation of West Bank grave

The fresh attacks were some of the most intense since the start of a three-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that has done little to halt daily exchanges of fire, mostly in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah said on Saturday that it had targeted troops in northern Israel with drones on at least two occasions in response to the continued strikes. The Israeli military said “several” explosive drones were launched into Israeli territory, with one army reservist severely wounded and two others moderately injured in one of the attacks. Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Israeli strikes across the south, including one on the town of Saksakiyeh. The Health Ministry said that raid “resulted in an initial toll of seven martyrs, including a girl, and 15 wounded, including three children”. The Israeli military said it struck “Hezbollah gunmen operating from within a structure used for military purposes” in Saksakiyeh. It said it was “aware of reports regarding harm to uninvolved civilians in the structure. The details of the incident are under review.” The Health Ministry reported that another Israeli strike on a motorcycle in the city of Nabatieh hit “a Syrian national and his 12-year old daughter”. “After they managed to move away from the site of the first strike, the drone attacked a second time,” killing the father, the ministry said, adding the drone then targeted the girl “directly for a third time”. The girl was undergoing life-saving surgery, it said. – AFP TEHRAN’S RESTRAINT IS OVER, SAYS SPOKESMAN ISTANBUL: Tehran’s “restraint is over”, an Iranian parliamentary spokesman said yesterday as tensions continued to escalate with the United States. “As of today (Sunday), our restraint is over. Any attack on our vessels will be met with a heavy and decisive Iranian response against US vessels and bases,” said Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for Iran’s parliament’s Foreign Policy and National Security Committee. He warned that “the clock is ticking against American interests”. “The best course (for the US) is to surrender and make concessions. They must adapt to the new regional order.” Regional tensions have escalated since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb 28. – Bernama GAZA AIRSTRIKES LEAVE THREE DEAD CAIRO: Israeli strikes killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza yesterday, including two members of the Hamas-run police force, health officials said, in violence that underscored the fragility of a US brokered ceasefire. Medics said an airstrike killed one person in the Maghazi refugee camp, while another killed the head of the police force in Khan Younis, Wessam Abdel-Hadi, and his aide. Reuters has reported that Israel has heightened its attacks on Gaza’s police force that has helped to re-establish governance in areas under its control. Violence in Gaza has persisted despite an October 2025 ceasefire. – Reuters

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dehumanisation of Palestinians that we see unfolding across the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories). It spares no one, dead or alive,” said Ajith Sunghay, head of the OHCHR Palestinian office. Reuters could not reach settlers from the nearby Sa-Nur settlement for comment. Sa-Nur was one of 19 settlements evacuated under the 2005 Israeli disengagement plan, which also included Israel’s withdrawal of settlers and troops from Gaza. Netanyahu’s government approved Sa-Nur’s re-establishment a year ago and construction has advanced rapidly, according to Peace Now, an Israeli settlement watchdog. The West Bank is among the territories that Palestinians seek for an independent state. Israel cites historical and biblical ties to the land, as well as security needs. Netanyahu’s government, which staunchly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state, has been accelerating settlement building, while a rise in attacks by settlers on Palestinians has drawn international alarm. The United Nations and most countries deem Israel’s settlements on West Bank land captured in the 1967 war illegal, a view that Israel disputes. – AFP

o UN Human Rights Office condemns incident

ASASA: Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank forced Palestinians to exhume the body of their father from his freshly dug village grave, his family said, near a settlement re-established by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Hussein Asasa, 80, died on Friday of natural causes and was buried that evening at the cemetery of Asasa village near Jenin, with all the necessary permits from Israel’s military, whose forces were at the site, his son Mohammed said. But shortly after the burial, the family was called back by some of the villagers, who said settlers were at the grave, ordering the grave be dug up. “They said the land was for settlement and that burial was not allowed. We told them that this is the village’s cemetery, not part of the settlement,” said Asasa. The settlers then threatened to dig the grave up with a bulldozer, Asasa said, so the family decided to exhume their father’s body themselves. “We found that they already dug the grave

and reached the body. We continued digging and got the body and buried him in another cemetery,” he said. Video circulating on social media appeared to show settlers watching as people dig in the ground of a hill slope. They then carry away what looks like a body as Israeli troops walk behind them. Reuters verified the location as Asasa. The Israeli military said the funeral had been coordinated with it and that it had not instructed the family to rebury their father. Soldiers were sent to the scene following a report about a confrontation with settlers who were “digging in the area”, the military said. “The soldiers confiscated digging tools from the Israeli civilians and remained at the location in order to prevent further friction,” the military said. It added that it condemns actions that violate the “dignity of the living and the deceased”. The UN Human Rights Office condemned the incident. “This is appalling and emblematic of the

Israel pounds Lebanon despite truce, killing at least nine BEIRUT: Israel carried out strikes across Lebanon on Saturday, killing at least nine people in the south, according to authorities, with raids also targeting a highway not far from Beirut outside of Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.

Lebanese first responders searching for victims at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Nabatieh. – AFPPIC

Detained flotilla activists deported following investigation TEL AVIV: Israel yesterday deported two foreign activists seized from a Gaza-bound flotilla, in what a rights group representing them described as a “punitive attack” on a civilian mission. vessel intercepted by the Israeli navy in international waters off the coast of Greece on April 30.

appeal contesting the pair’s detention. “From their abduction in international waters to their unlawful detention in total isolation and the ill-treatment they were subjected to, the Israeli authorities’ actions were a punitive attack on a purely civilian mission,” Adalah, the rights group that represented the pair, said after their release. – AFP

provocation flotilla, were deported today from Israel” following an investigation, the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted on X yesterday. Israel would “not allow any breach” of the blockade on Gaza, it said. Spain, Brazil and the United Nations had all called for the men’s swift release. On Wednesday, an Israeli court rejected an

The pair were seized by Israeli forces and taken to Israel for questioning, while the others were taken to the Greek island of Crete and released. “Saif Abu Keshek and Thiago Avila, from the

Saif Abu Keshek, a Spanish national of Palestinian origin, and Brazilian Thiago Avila were among dozens of activists aboard a