PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron is meeting Wednesday for the first time with some of the 15,000 Ukrainian troops that France has trained for the country's fight against the Russian invasion.
Macron's scheduled visit to a military camp in eastern France, where French officers are training what will become a full new brigade of 4,500 Ukrainian troops, comes as the country's Western allies are mulling a victory plan championed by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Macron's renewed focus on Ukraine also reflects how shifting politics in France have weakened his sway over domestic affairs. His decision to call surprise legislative elections in June backfired, leaving him with a minority government and strengthening the hand of his opponents in parliament. The government late Tuesday survived a no-confidence vote, the first of what threatens to be repeated efforts by Macron's foes to bring down Prime Minister Michel Barnier in the months ahead.
Inspecting the Ukrainian troops being trained for frontline combat and on French-supplied weapons systems will highlight that Macron's influence in defense and foreign affairs remains largely intact.
The Ukrainian Brigade No. 155 will eventually be made up of 4,500 troops. Of those, 2,300 are being trained in France, forming three battalions of infantry, plus engineers, artillery teams and other specialists. The brigade’s other battalions will be trained by Ukraine, to take the brigade's total strength to 4,500 soldiers.
France is also equipping the brigade with an array of weaponry, plus training to use and maintain it. Macron's office said the brigade will get 128 armored troop carriers, 18 Caesar artillery pieces and 18 AMX light tanks, plus Milan anti-tank missiles and heavy trucks. Macron has pledged up to 3 billion euros (US$3.3 billion) worth of military aid for Ukraine this year, his office said.
Macron's office said the training has been adapted to front-line conditions that Ukrainian troops are encountering in the fight against Russia's invasion forces, with trainees exposed to combat-like stress and noise, plus drones. Training trenches have been dug using methods and layouts similar to those in Ukraine. Around 1,500 French military personnel are involved in the brigade's training over several months.
The French military says it has trained nearly 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including several thousand put through training courses in Poland.
FILE - Ukrainian infantrymen train with French soldiers to learn combat skills, in France, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani, File)
FILE - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands after a press conference, on Feb. 16, 2024 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, Pool, File)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — A large-scale Israeli operation in northern Gaza has killed and wounded dozens of people and threatens to shut down three hospitals over a year into the war with Hamas, Palestinian officials and residents said Wednesday.
Heavy fighting is underway in Jabaliya, where Israeli forces have carried out several major operations over the course of the war and then returned as militants regroup. The entire north, including Gaza City, has suffered heavy destruction and has been largely isolated by Israeli forces since late last year.
The continuing cycle of destruction and death in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, comes as Israel expands a weeklong ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon and considers a major retaliatory strike on Iran.
Residents of Jabaliya, a refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation, said thousands of people have been trapped in their homes since the operation began Sunday, as Israeli jets and drones buzz overhead and troops battle militants in the streets.
“It’s like hell. We can’t get out,” said Mohamed Awda, who lives with his parents and six siblings. He said there were three bodies in the street outside his home that could not be retrieved because of the fighting.
“The quadcopters are everywhere, and they fire at anyone. You can’t even open the window,” he told The Associated Press by phone, speaking over the sound of explosions.
Gaza's Health Ministry says it recovered 40 bodies from Jabaliya from Sunday until Tuesday, and another 14 from communities farther north. The toll is likely higher as there are bodies buried under the rubble and in areas that can't be accessed, it said.
An airstrike in Jabaliya early Wednesday killed at least nine people, including two women and two children, according to Al-Ahly Hospital, which received the bodies. Strikes in central Gaza killed another nine people, including three children, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
Residents of Jabaliya fear Israel’s aim is to depopulate the north and turn it into a closed military zone or a Jewish settlement. Israel has blocked all roads except for the main highway leading from Jabaliya to the south, according to residents.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said it was evacuating seven schools that were being used as shelters and that only two of eight water wells in the camp are still functioning.
“We are concerned about the displacement to the south,” Ahmed Qamar, who lives in Jabaliya with his wife, children and parents, said in a text message. "People here say clearly that they will die here in northern Gaza and and won’t go to southern Gaza.”
“The situation is tense,” Fadel Naeem, the director of Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City, told AP in a text message. “We declared a state of emergency, suspended scheduled surgeries, and discharged patients whose conditions are stable.”
Israel’s offensive has gutted Gaza’s health sector, forcing most of its hospitals to shut down and leaving the rest only partially functioning.
Naeem said three hospitals farther north — Kamal Adwan, Awda and the Indonesian Hospital - have become almost inaccessible because of the fighting. The Gaza Health Ministry says the Israeli army has ordered all three to evacuate staff and patients. Meanwhile, no humanitarian aid has entered the north since Oct. 1, according to U.N. data.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the hospitals or the apparent suspension of aid delivery in the north.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military spokesperson, said late Tuesday that Israeli forces were operating in Jabaliya “to prevent Hamas' regrouping efforts" and had killed around 100 militants, without providing evidence. Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it fights in residential areas.
Israel ordered the wholesale evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, in the opening weeks of the war, but hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have remained there. Israel reiterated those instructions over the weekend, telling people to flee south to an expanded humanitarian zone where hundreds of thousands are already crammed into squalid tent camps.
The war began just over a year ago, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. They are still holding around 100 hostages, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters. It has said women and children make up over half of the dead. The offensive has also caused staggering destruction across the territory and displaced around 90% of the population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting until “total victory” over Hamas and the return of all the captives.
On Tuesday, he warned that Lebanon would meet the same fate as Gaza if its people did not rise up against Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into Israel after the initial Hamas attack. That set in motion a cycle of escalation that ignited a full-scale war last month.
“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” Netanyahu said, addressing the Lebanese people.
In recent weeks Israel has waged a heavy air campaign across large parts of Lebanon, targeting what it says are Hezbollah rocket launchers and other militant sites. A series of strikes killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his top commanders.
So far, ground operations appear to be focused on a narrow strip along the border, but Israel has warned people to evacuate dozens of cities and towns, many of them north of a buffer zone declared by the United Nations after the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
Hezbollah's acting leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in a televised statement Tuesday that the group has replaced its slain commanders and was preventing Israeli ground forces from advancing. The militants have extended their rocket fire deeper into Israel, disrupting life but causing few casualties.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that Hezbollah has fired more than 12,000 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel since the start of the hostilities last year.
Israel is meanwhile considering options for a strike on Iran that could potentially escalate the war on yet another front. Iran, which supports Hezbollah and Hamas, launched a wave of some 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last week in retaliation for the killing of top militants from both groups.
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Natalie Melzer in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Mourners gather around bodies of Palestinians killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, outside the hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Mourners attend the funeral of Palestinians killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip outside the hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Tents set up as temporary shelters by displaced families fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in the south and Dahiyeh, are seen along the Ramlet al-Baida public beach in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Men sleep at the Ramlet al-Baida public beach after fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Mourners pray over the body of a Palestinian child, Hosam Al Khaldi, killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip outside the hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
