SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Tropical Storm Rafael was chugging past western Jamaica on Tuesday and was expected to strengthen into a hurricane as it headed toward Cuba.
The storm was located 70 miles (115 kilometers) southwest of Montego Bay, Jamaica, on Tuesday morning. It had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph) and was moving northwest at 14 mph (23 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The center said it expected “steady to rapid intensification” over the next 24 to 36 hours. It was expected to continue to pass by Jamaica on Tuesday afternoon, be near or over the Cayman Islands on Tuesday night and make landfall in western Cuba on Wednesday.
"Rafael is expected to become a hurricane as it passes near the Cayman Islands with further strengthening before it makes landfall in Cuba," the center said.
On Tuesday morning, Cuban Civil Defense called on Cubans on social media to prepare as soon as possible, because when the storm makes landfall “it’s important to stay where you are.” The day before, authorities said they had issued an evacuation order for 37,000 people far eastern Cuba, in the province of Guantanamo, due to bad weather.
A hurricane warning was in effect for the Cayman Islands and the Cuban provinces of Pinar del Rio, Artemisa, La Habana, Mayabeque, Matanzas and the Isle of Youth.
A tropical storm warning was in effect for Jamaica and the Cuban provinces of Villa Clara, Cienfuegos, Sancti Spiritus and Ciego de Avila, as well as the lower and middle Florida Keys from Key West to west of the Channel 5 Bridge, and Dry Tortugas.
A tropical storm watch was in effect for the Cuban provinces of Camaguey and Las Tunas.
“The storm is currently situated in an atmospheric and oceanic environment that is quite conducive for strengthening,” the hurricane center said. Though an expert at the center said it was still unclear how much Florida and other coastal parts of the United States would be affected.
In the Cayman Islands, officials closed schools and government offices as they urged residents to prepare. Long lines were reported at grocery stores as the storm approached.
Jamaica also closed down as a precaution, with the storm's outer winds battering the island late Monday. “We urge all Jamaicans to remain vigilant,” said Minister of Local Government and Community Development Desmond McKenzie.
The storm is bad news for Cuba, which is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Oscar, which battered the island about two weeks ago after making landfall in the eastern part of Cuba, killing at least six people. The storm also coincided with a large-scale blackout on the island.
Forecasters warned Rafael would unleash heavy rains across the western Caribbean that could lead to flooding and mudslides, with totals of 3 to 6 inches (7 to 15 centimeters) and up to 10 inches (25 cm) expected locally in Jamaica and parts of Cuba.
Heavy rainfall also was expected to spread north into Florida and nearby areas of the southeast U.S. during the middle to late part of the week. A few tornadoes also were expected Wednesday over the Keys and southwesternmost Florida mainland.
Rafael is the 17th named storm of the season.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted the 2024 hurricane season was likely to be well above average, with between 17 and 25 named storms. The forecast called for as many as 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes.
An average Atlantic hurricane season produces 14 named storms, seven of them hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
Tropical Storm Rafael spins toward the Cayman Islands as Cuba prepares for hurricane hit
This satellite image provided by NOAA shows weather systems Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (NOAA via AP)
Tropical Storm Rafael spins toward the Cayman Islands as Cuba prepares for hurricane hit
Israeli strikes killed at least 30 people in Gaza, including on a home where displaced families were sheltering, according to Palestinian health officials.
Ten people were killed early Tuesday, including four children and two women, and a strike late Monday on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed at least 20 people, including eight women and six children, health officials said.
The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a militant had operated, and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Israel has been waging a massive offensive in northern Gaza — which was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory — for nearly a month.
Despite growing pressure from the United States and others in the international community for a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon, intensified Israeli strikes against the Hezbollah militant group are expanding beyond Lebanon’s border areas. Israel is also fighting a seemingly endless war against Hamas in northern Gaza.
Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 wounded in Lebanon, the Health Ministry reports.
More than a year of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children. The war began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.
Here’s the latest:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed his popular defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in a surprise announcement.
Netanyahu and Gallant have repeatedly been at odds throughout the war in Gaza. But Netanyahu had avoided firing his rival.
A previous attempt to fire Gallant in March 2023 sparked widespread street protests against Netanyahu.
The prime minister announced his decision late Tuesday.
ARIDA, Lebanon — Israel’s escalated aerial bombardment of Lebanon has driven over half a million people to cross the border into Syria, overwhelming already strained resources.
Among the arrivals, an estimated 7,000 are pregnant, with about 800 expected to give birth within the next month, Muriel Mafico, the representative of the United Nations Population Fund in Syria, told The Associated Press.
“The majority of the people who arrived in Syria are women and children,” she said. “Once again, it is women and children who are paying a heavy price.”
Mafico said the UNFPA, along with its international and local partners, is providing services at the border as well as following up on those women who are ending up in shelters or staying with relatives in Syria.
But, she said, "the response so far is less than adequate due to the constraints on resources that we have.”
The Lebanese General Security recorded 361,300 Syrians and 177,864 Lebanese crossing into Syria between Sept. 23 and Nov. 1, according to a report by Lebanon’s crisis response unit.
JIYEH, Lebanon — An Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in a coastal town south of Beirut killed at least one person, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
The ministry said 20 others were wounded in the strike Tuesday in Jiyeh, around 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the port of Sidon.
The attack hit an area that has not been a regular target of Israeli military operations and had not received prior evacuation warnings.
“It felt like it was inside the house,” Malika Al Hajj, an elderly woman living in the area, told The Associated Press. “I ran away — I don’t even know which neighbor brought me out, because everything was black. You couldn’t see anything.”
Once outside, Hajj said she discovered that the strike had hit the nearby building where her nephews live.
“Men, women and children” live inside, she said. “I just want to be reassured. I saw some of them, but the others, they told me, were taken to the hospital."
At the site of the strike, the building’s skeletal frame stands amid the rubble, its concrete shattered, windows blown out and metal twisted from the impact.
Families were seen leaving the area, carrying what belongings they could gather.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said it conducted an airstrike on a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in Syria on Tuesday.
The military said the strike targeted the facility run by Hezbollah’s munitions unit in the Syrian town of al-Qusayr, near the border with Lebanon. It said Hezbollah had recently expanded its facilities in the area to step up weapons smuggling into Lebanon from Syria.
The strikes hit an industrial zone in al-Qusayr, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict-monitoring group. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria over recent years, primarily targeting government-controlled areas, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses these operations. The strikes often target Syrian forces or Iranian-backed groups.
On Monday, an Israeli airstrike struck near the Sayida Zeinab suburb, south of Damascus, an area where Iran-backed groups are active. The Israeli military claimed responsibility for killing the head of Hezbollah’s military branch in Syria, whom it identified as Mahmoud Mohammed Shaheen.
For the past month, Israel has been carrying out an escalated bombardment campaign in Lebanon, aiming to cripple the Hezbollah militant group, which is allied with Syria and Iran. Israel has also launched ground incursions just across the Israel-Lebanon border, saying it aims to put an end to a year of Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Dozens of Palestinians trickled southward from war-ravaged northern Gaza, recounting how they had hardly eaten in days with aid long cut off to the area under heavy Israeli bombardment and military campaign.
Leaving the far northern town of Beit Lahiya, the families -- mostly women and children -- dragged rucksacks and satchels with belongings as they walked down a street entering Gaza City, where every building had been completely flattened or partially destroyed.
“We came barefoot. We have no sandals, no clothes, nothing. We have no money. There is no food or drink,” said Huda Abu Laila.
Israel launched a fresh offensive in northern Gaza in early October, focusing on Jabaliya, a densely populated, decades-old urban refugee camp where it says Hamas had regrouped. Other areas also hit include Beit Lahyia and Beit Hanoun, situated just north of Gaza City, like Jabaliya.
The U.N. estimated last week that some 100,000 people remain in the affected area. It has said no aid has reached the far north of the enclave for weeks. On Monday, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said that there are no ambulances or emergency crews currently operating north of Gaza City.
Israel has repeatedly issued evacuation warnings for the entirety of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where several hundred thousand more Palestinians remain.
GENEVA — The World Health Organization says it’s working to arrange medical evacuations for more than 100 people from Gaza on Wednesday, which would be the largest such operation of its kind in six months.
Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said the U.N. health agency was helping coordinate the evacuations through the Kerem Shalom crossing based on a list of priority candidates drawn up by the Health Ministry in Gaza.
Speaking by video from Gaza to reporters in Geneva, Peeperkorn said medical evacuations have been arranged for 282 people since Israeli forces forced the closure of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on May 6.
Before the Rafah closure, nearly 4,700 people were ferried out of Gaza in medical evacuations since the Oct. 7 attacks last year, he said.
The largest one since May involved 97 people who were evacuated on Sept. 11. Thousands of people remain on waiting lists to get out.
WHO said people with chronic conditions like cancer as patients from trauma cases – injuries -- were among those to be evacuated. Peeperkorn said most would be taken to the United Arab Emirates for further care, while about 30 were to go to Romania. (edited)
ISLAMABAD — Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday reiterated that his country does not seek an escalation in the Middle East but reserved the right to defend itself against Israel’s attack with a “measured and calculative” response.
Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking at a news conference during a visit to Pakistan, said that “unlike the Israeli regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not seek escalation.”
“We reserve our inherent rights to legitimate defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and we will certainly respond to the Israeli aggression in a proper time and in a proper manner in a very measured and very calculated manner,” he said.
Araghchi met with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, who called for an urgent cease-fire to de-escalate tensions in the region.
BEIRUT — The Lebanese Red Cross will send another convoy Tuesday to Wata al-Khiam in southern Lebanon to search for and remove the bodies of 15 people killed in an Israeli airstrike, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.
Paramedics accessed the site of the strike two days prior and removed five other bodies, but needed to return with larger vehicles to remove the rubble. The NNA said the deployment is in coordination with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, which is the usual procedure.
The Red Cross did not immediately comment on the news, but expressed concern in recent weeks over several instances where Israel has struck in or close to areas where they have deployed paramedics to search for wounded people and casualties.
The Israeli military said it issued warnings to the residents there in late October to evacuate ahead of strikes on Hezbollah militant targets, and told ambulances to avoid the area.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip has killed at least 20 people, mostly women and children.
Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of a nearby hospital that received the casualties, said the strike late Monday hit a home in the town of Beit Lahiya where multiple families were sheltering.
The dead included eight women and six children, according to a list provided by the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service.
The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a militant had operated, and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Israel has been waging a massive offensive in northern Gaza — which was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory — for nearly a month. It ordered the complete evacuation of Beit Lahiya, the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and has allowed almost no humanitarian aid into the area for over a month.
Tens of thousands of people have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the war, which began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes early Tuesday killed 10 people in the Gaza Strip, including four children and two women.
One strike hit a house in the Tufah neighborhood in Gaza City, killing two children and their parents, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service. Two other children were wounded, it said.
In the central town of Zuweida, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent where a displaced family was sheltering, killing four people, including a mother and her two children, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah.
Another strike hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing two people, the hospital said.
An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the hospital morgue.
The Israeli military says it only targets militants and accuses them of hiding among civilians. It rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which says over half were women and children. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian officials say Israeli forces have killed four people in the occupied West Bank.
Two were killed in an airstrike early Tuesday near the northern city of Jenin, a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent years. Two other people were fatally shot in the village of Tamoun, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said it called in an airstrike on a militant cell near Jenin. It also said it killed two armed militants in an airstrike in the Tamoun area.
Israeli forces have carried out near-daily military raids in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the Israel-Hamas war. The Health Ministry says at least 767 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since then. Most appear to have been militants killed in battles with Israeli forces, but the dead also include civilian bystanders and people killed during protests.
Israel says the raids are aimed at dismantling Hamas in the West Bank and preventing attacks. Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis since the start of the war.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state.
Israeli army investigators arrive at the site of the early morning attack of Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Palestinians mourn over the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinians mourn over the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinians inspect vehicles that were burnt during an early morning attack by Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Palestinians inspect vehicles that were burnt during an early morning attack by Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Mourners carry the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
