A somber mass funeral was held in Gaza City on Tuesday for 112 Palestinians whose bodies were recovered nearly three years after an Israeli airstrike flattened a residential block. Hundreds of people gathered as the bodies, wrapped in Palestinian flags, were laid in rows near the destroyed buildings before being carried on stretchers through a narrow street for burial in a nearby cemetery.
The 112 victims were among more than 300 killed during an attack on November 22, 2023, on Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood. First responders recovered the bodies over the weekend after digging through the rubble for 136 hours, according to the Civil Defense, a rescue agency operated under Gaza’s Hamas-run Interior Ministry. The bodies included 40 children, 30 women, and seven people with disabilities, the agency said in a statement, adding that another 157 people remained missing under the rubble. The Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has since killed 73,375 people, including civilians and combatants, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Around 7,400 people are still missing and presumed buried under the rubble from the war, according to Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s records department.
Elsewhere, a cargo ship was reported to have been “hit by an unknown projectile” at 2 a.m. local time in the Strait of Hormuz, approximately 37 kilometers (23 miles) northeast of Al Khasab in Oman, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said. British maritime security firm Ambrey confirmed the ship suffered damage. The Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas passed before the war, has been effectively shut by Iran’s attacks on shipping since February, while the U.S. has also imposed a blockade on Iranian ports in the waterway.
Despite conflicting claims regarding negotiations, mediation efforts were underway between the U.S. and Iran to wind down the war, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said Tuesday. “We’re looking into a diplomatic solution,” he said during a briefing, without elaborating. U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened to unleash massive strikes on Iran before calling them off at the urging of Gulf allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. On Monday, the president said the two sides were resuming talks, but Iran insisted it was only talking with Oman about establishing a route through the Strait of Hormuz, drawing Trump’s ire. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters there has been progress made in talks between Iran and Oman, “but not finality yet.” Iran had stated on Monday that Tehran was not currently holding negotiations with the United States and was instead carrying out discussions with Oman focused on establishing a temporary route for safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
In Yemen, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a military spokesman for the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, said a drone hit a “sensitive target” at the airport in the southwestern city of Najran, without providing evidence. He said the attack was in response to what he described as Saudi breaching of Yemen’s airspace over the provinces of Saada and Hajjah. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia. The Houthis recently announced a blockade on Saudi-linked shipping passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that leads to the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia led an international coalition and imposed an air and sea blockade against the rebels after they seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen in a civil war that began in 2014. Major fighting ended in a truce in 2022.
Families of the more than 200 people killed in the massive explosion at the port in Beirut in 2020 gathered at the blast site to mark six years since tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate exploded, devastating large parts of the Lebanese capital. No one has been convicted in a long-stalled judicial investigation into the incident, but some families expressed renewed hope after government officials promised indictments would be issued by the end of the year. The tragedy has been overshadowed by recent events, including two wars between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group and an Israeli military occupation of much of the country’s south. Implementation of the June 26 agreement began last month with an initial “pilot zone” in an area that wasn’t occupied by Israeli forces but had previously sustained Israeli fire. U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa suggested ahead of the three-day talks that no new pilot zones would be immediately implemented, saying that “moving too quickly risks jeopardizing the very civilians this process is meant to protect.”
