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Palestinians welcome EU nations’ statehood vow as Israel hammers Gaza, killing a mother and her unborn child
The leaders of three European countries — Norway, Spain and Ireland — announced Wednesday that they would formally recognize a Palestinian state on May 28. The move is intended to pressure Israel to accept a political process to end its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel reacted angrily to the decision, calling it “a distorted step” and recalling its ambassadors to the three countries. The Jewish state’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, said he’d summoned the three countries’ ambassadors in Israel and that they would be shown a harrowing video of the abduction of five female hostages by Hamas during its Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which sparked the ongoing war.
The video, released by the Hostages Families Forum with permission of the abductees’ families, was recorded by Hamas fighters wearing body cameras as they abducted the women, who are still believed to be held captive in Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Hamas, which ruled over Gaza for almost two decades prior to Oct. 7, both welcomed the announcement by the European nations, which came amid intensified fighting in Gaza.
Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu/Getty
Israeli tanks advanced to the edge of a crowded district in the heart of the southern city of Rafah on Wednesday. Israel’s offensive in Rafah, which the U.S. and others had long warned against, has driven almost 1 million people who’d sought refuge there out of the city — many of them already displaced multiple times during the seven-month war.
But Israel’s fight with Hamas isn’t limited to southern Gaza. It has also intensified again this week in parts of the Palestinian enclave battered by Israeli artillery and ground forces early on in the war.
At the Kamal Adwan hospital in the northern Jabalia refugee camp, CBS News producer Marwan al-Ghoul said 150 patients and medics had to run for their lives as the Israel Defense Forces carried out repeated strikes Tuesday night.
The IDF said in a statement Wednesday that soldiers had “dismantled a multitude of terrorist infrastructure and conducted aerial and artillery strikes on terror targets in the area” of Jabalia. Palestinian media said at least six people were killed, and images from the region showed shrouded bodies in a morgue, including several that appeared to be children.
Karam Hassan/Anadolu/Getty
An Israeli strike in the central Gaza town of Deir al Balah killed at least 12 people, including small children, al-Ghoul reported. CBS News’ team visited the town’s Al Aqsa hospital soon after the strike and saw an infant being removed from the womb of his mother, who was killed in the strike. Doctors were unable to save the tiny baby.
The U.N. aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, estimated that as of Monday, more than 810,000 people had fled Rafah in two weeks. The agency has suspended food distribution in Rafah, citing a lack of supplies and insecurity in the area. Most of those who’ve fled Rafah have moved, on the IDF’s orders, to a crowded coastal area northwest of the city, al-Mawasi, which Israel says it has established as a humanitarian zone.
“For thousands of Palestinian families there is nowhere left to go: military operations & bombardments pose a continuous threat, buildings have been turned to rubble,” UNRWA said in a social media post on Wednesday, adding: “Nowhere is safe in Gaza.”
A U.S. official has said that Israeli leaders have addressed many of President Biden’s concerns about launching a full-scale ground operation in Rafah, and that the White House had yet to signal its support for such an assault on the city.
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1-month-old twins who died with mother believed to be the youngest-known Hurricane Helene victims
Month-old twin boys are believed to be the youngest known victims of Hurricane Helene. The boys died alongside their mother last week when a large tree fell through the roof of their home in Thomson, Georgia.
Obie Williams, grandfather of the twins, said he could hear babies crying and branches battering the windows when he spoke with his daughter, Kobe Williams, 27, on the phone last week as the storm tore through Georgia.
The single mother had been sitting in bed holding sons Khyzier and Khazmir and chatting on the phone with various family members while the storm raged outside.
AP
Kobe’s mother, Mary Jones, was staying with her daughter, helping her take care of the babies. She was on the other side of the trailer home when she heard a loud crash as a tree fell through the roof of her daughter’s bedroom.
“Kobe, Kobe, answer me, please,” Jones cried out in desperation, but she received no response.
Kobe and the twins were found dead.
“I’d seen pictures when they were born and pictures every day since, but I hadn’t made it out there yet to meet them,” Obie Williams told The Associated Press days after the storm ravaged eastern Georgia. “Now I’ll never get to meet my grandsons. It’s devastating.”
The babies, born Aug. 20, are the youngest known victims of a storm that had claimed more than 200 lives across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas. Among the other young victims are a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south in Washington County, Georgia.
“She was so excited to be a mother of those beautiful twin boys,” said Chiquita Jones-Hampton, Kobe’ Jones’ niece. “She was doing such a good job and was so proud to be their mom.”
Jones-Hampton, who considered Kobe a sister, said the family is in shock and heartbroken.
In Obie Williams’ home city of Augusta, 30 miles east of his daughter’s home in Thomson, power lines stretched along the sidewalks, tree branches blocked the roads and utility poles lay cracked and broken. The debris left him trapped in his neighborhood near the South Carolina border for a little over a day after the storm barreled through.
He said one of his sons dodged fallen trees and downed power lines to check on Kobe, and he could barely bear to tell his father what he found.
Many of his 14 other children are still without power in their homes across Georgia. Some have sought refuge in Atlanta, and others have traveled to Augusta to see their father and mourn together, he said.
He described his daughter as a lovable, social and strong woman. She always had a smile and loved to make people laugh, he said.
And she loved to dance, Jones-Hampton said.
“That was my baby,” Williams said. “And everybody loved her.”
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