Israel strikes Iranian state TV in new attack on Tehran – DW – 06/16/2025
06/16/2025
June 16, 2025 Palestinians reported killed at Gaza food aid center
Palestinians walks toward a Gaza Humanitarian Fund food distribution center in southern Gaza on June 5 Image: AFP/Getty Images
At least 20 Palestinians were killed in shootings at food distribution centers in southern Gaza, the Health Ministry reported on Monday.
According to the Health Ministry, the people killed were trying to reach the US- and Israel-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Gaza's civil defense agency reports that dozens of Palestinians have been killed while trying to reach aid distribution points operated by GHF. The United Nations does not work with the foundation, which it considers ineffective and aimed at catering to Israeli military objectives.
There have been near-daily reports of shootings as Palestinians move through Israeli-controlled areas toward GHF food aid centers in Gaza.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on Monday's incident. In previous incidents, the Israeli military has said it has fired warning shots at people approaching their positions.
Israel restricts media access to the Gaza strip, meaning that news agencies are unable to independently verify death tolls.
The UN's OCHA humanitarian agency has warned that Gaza's entire population of 2 million is at risk of famine. Israel is under international pressure to allow more aid to reach Gazans.
Since Israel resumed strikes on Gaza in March, more than 5,000 people have been reported killed. Israel also cut off aid entering Gaza for two months, saying supplies were aiding Hamas militants who continue to control the enclave.
More than 55,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks that preceded the war with Israel.
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DW
3 days ago
- DW
AI in the Middle East: Fact-checkers fight fire with fire
Conflicts, crisis and information vacuums in the Middle East mean AI-generated disinformation is overflowing. But fact-checkers are turning Arabic-language AI into weapons on their mission to counter disinformation. In 2014, the news about a miracle herb from Lebanon that could treat skin cancer was spread on social media. If rubbed on the skin, the herb promised to immediately cure all symptoms. It was that promise which made Moath Althaher's cousin stop her chemotherapy treatment for skin cancer. She passed away just a few months later. For medical student Moah Althaher, this was the moment he decided that he needed to do something to fight health-related disinformation. He had just witnessed the power of such misinformation to cause severe damage firsthand. The idea for the fact-checking platform Fatabyyano was born, initially with a focus on health-related disinformation. A real risk to social cohesion and regional stability Misleading health claims are only a drop in the ocean in the vast disinformation landscape in the Middle East. The nature and content of disinformation in the MENA region vary significantly, depending on the specific country context. Ongoing political conflicts and instabilities such as the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war or the recent fall of the Assad regime in Syria are the main drivers for the spread of toxic content, increasingly created by AI tools. After witnessing the impact of health misinformation firsthand, Moath Althaher launched the fact-checking platform Fatabyyano Image: Yuan-Bin Zhao Walid Al-Saqaf, a professor of journalism and AI at the Doha Institute, explains: "The MENA region's fragmented and government-controlled media, as well as its limited digital literacy, heighten vulnerability to AI-driven disinformation. AI has substantially accelerated the proliferation of disinformation in the MENA region, thereby posing serious risks to societal cohesion and regional stability." Al-Saqaf also says that the development of AI technologies has exacerbated the spread of disinformation as more sophisticated deepfakes and AI-generated images and audio can be created with the help of easily available and cheap AI tools. Next level disinformation A single piece of disinformation spread in Arabic could potentially reach an audience of more than 400 million Arabic speakers. Fatabyyano founder Moath Althaher has noticed a change in both the character and quality of disinformation that has been spread over the years. While in the early days of Fatabyyano, disinformation was often created with a silly or entertaining undertone which made it easy to detect, it now looks different. "Disinformation has gained a more serious tone and has become more sophisticated due to the development of AI tools," says Althaher. "Disinformation is now on another level and can even appear as deepfakes, using the voice or image of public figures." A piece of disinformation that was fact-checked by the Fatabyyano team was a Facebook reel that appeared to show Ahmad Fakhouri, host of the BBC show "Trending," presenting a herbal spray that could help people quit smoking. While the host elaborates on the health benefits of the spray, instructions on how to buy it are provided right below the deepfake video. Fact-checking such a video now requires a multilayered approach: It needs to be checked for its claim, as well as the voice and images used. Fatabyyano debunked a deepfake of BBC host Ahmad Fakhouri promoting a fake anti-smoking spray, showcasing the complexity of modern fact-checking Image: Fatabyyano There has also been a shift in the motivation behind the spreading of disinformation. When Moath first started his fact-checking work, fake news were often being spread for entertainment or communication purposes. Now the main motivation is to deceive in order to generate profit - as the immediate buying instructions in the case of the herbal spray video demonstrates: It sells at 25 Euro for a pack of four. Moath Althaher is part of a vibrant community of fact-checkers in the Middle East who are trying to keep up with the huge amounts of false and misleading information. AI tools seem like potential allies in an impossible task, however they come with their own set of challenges. "The data that Arabic language models are trained on is of low quality in comparison to English language models, both in terms of quality and quantity," Althaher explains. "This leads to limited performance." The complexity of Arabic, with its many dialects and writing styles, makes AI training and language processing especially challenging Image: Floris Van den Abbeele/DW The complexity of the Arabic language further complicates the situation. With dozens of regional dialects, the creation and processing of datasets become increasingly difficult. Abed Khooli, an AI researcher based in Ramallah, explains: "Arabic also uses different accents that can alter the meaning of words, varying writing styles, and numerous regional and country dialects, in addition to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which complicates processing." Digging deeper: Understanding the underlying narratives The Fatabyyano team is currently developing the tool, which is an AI-powered instrument designed for real-time fact-checking and trend analysis in Arabic. This tool aims to keep pace with the immense amount of high-quality, AI-generated disinformation. goes beyond simple fact-checking: It helps to uncover and understand the underlying disinformation narratives, which is especially helpful in the health sector. To overcome the impediment of low-quality data, the model has been trained on a decade's worth of fact-checking done by the Fatabyyano team, which presents a significant qualitative and quantitative dataset. The tool can respond to any requests by users based on this curated data, as well as draw on other trusted and specified sources. Furthermore, the team utilizes advanced AI tools across multiple trusted platforms to build a larger database. "A piece of misinformation is always the symptom of a narrative. If you understand the narrative, you can tackle the problem at its root," explains Althaher. Palestinian Territories: Fact-checking in times of war Narratives play an important role in the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and shape the public discourse. "Decades of tension and violence between Palestinians and Israelis have led to an environment where misinformation and disinformation has flourished," explains Elliot Higgins from Bellingcat in a BBC podcast . People are generally less likely to question information that confirms their views. Following the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas, the level of disinformation was at an unprecedented scale. Journalists in Gaza work under extreme conditions, verifying information despite displacement and limited access to internet and electricity Image: Hamed Sbeata/Middle East Images/picture alliance Fact-checkers from the Palestinian Territories do not only work in an environment fertile for disinformation, they also operate out of a war zone. Riham Abu Aita, based in Ramallah, founded the fact-checking organisation Kashif in 2019. The majority of fact-checking requests that the Kashif team currently receives are related to the situation in Gaza. One of Kashif's team members, Ahmad, is based in Gaza and is facing tough circumstances on the ground. He has been displaced more than three times and is currently with his family in Khan Younis. Access to connectivity or information are limited and Ahmad often relies on a wide network of people he knows on the ground and calls them to verify any information for fact-checks or reaches out to journalists or medical staff. Some of the fact-checking requests that the Kashif team receives are related to a term coined "Pallywood," which refers to a disinformation campaign that accuses Palestinians of faking suffering and civilian deaths in their conflict with Israel. One particularly disturbing aspect of these claims involves accusations that images of deceased children are staged and show dolls rather than children. In such cases, the Kashif team relies on their network to contact the children's families for testimonies or photos of the children — in order to prove that the accusations of staging are false. "We were not able to respond to all those requests because we are a small team, that's why we decided to integrate a chatbot into our website," explains Riham Abu Aita. The "Kashif bot" responds to requests by users to fact-check specific information or answer questions. It functions as an interactive bot that is trained by the Kashif team and provides the users with verified and trusted information only. The bot makes sure that the users receive answers quickly, as the requests do not have to be responded to by individual team members. The Kashif bot also helps the team understand which topics are of interest to the users of Kashif. Riham Abu Aita co-founded Kashif, a Palestinian platform promoting media literacy and fighting misinformation through fact-checking and ethical journalism Image: DW Akademie "The process of building the chatbot was much more complicated than expected," recalls Riham Abu Aita. "It took us more than six months to make sure that the chatbot was treating our content properly. It was difficult to even find a chatbot provider, as most providers do not focus on Arabic language." So far, the performance of the chatbot has been satisfying; People are using it frequently and the team is continuing to train it. However, Abu Aita acknowledges that her team's fact-checking capabilities are constrained by the environment in which they operate. "Sometimes the public asks us for fact-checks that would need security or military information," she explains. "But we do not have access to such information." Lebanon: Battling disinformation on social media Another hotspot where false and misleading information circulates is in Lebanon. There, disinformation is mostly shared and spread among friends or family members on WhatsApp groups, with content and interactions peaking during times of crisis or events. To fight fire with fire, the fact-checking platform Sawab was initially founded as a WhatsApp group in 2022. During the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria, disinformation spiked, and it became difficult for people to navigate, which brought the number of users in the Sawab WhatsApp group from a few hundred up to 2000 within only four or five months. During the earthquake, the number of AI-generated images circulating on WhatsApp was striking, such as the image of a dog sitting on top of the rubble under which a child's hand protrudes. Such images were likely spread to evoke sympathy or to gain traction or views. Due to the high demand for fact-checks, the Sawab team soon explored other social media channels and started their website in 2024. Just one of many images the Sawab team has identified as fake Image: Sawab Sawab has recently welcomed a special new member to its team of 14 part-time members: a virtual AI bot named VERIFAI that supports the team around the clock. The Sawab team was recently put to the test in the light of the high influx of disinformation emerging during the war in Gaza and the military escalation between Israel and Lebanon. The team members who commit to Sawab alongside full-time jobs or study commitments were simply not able to keep up with the amount of content. The VERIFAI Sawab bot now supports them on their mission of verifying news and combating hate speech. The VERIFAI bot assists the team in research, information gathering or specific editorial tasks while the team makes sure that the bot is given very precise instructions or reliable sources to use. However, the bot's contribution so far remains limited. "Until now, our virtual team member is not a fact-checker," explains Sawab's 22-year-old co-founder Youssef Al-Amin, a student at Doha Institute. "It is difficult to teach him (VERIFAI) how to use reliable sources. He still needs time to learn." The AI bot has been trained in Sawab's editorial style and platform-related specificities to be able to support its human team members in the best possible way. The bot was able to render some of the workflows more time efficient, which has helped other team members to free up and dedicate more of their time to fact-checking tasks. Youssef Al Amin, a Lebanese journalist and co-founder of Sawab, brings his fact-checking expertise to the stage at a DW Akademie conference in Tunis Image: DW Akademie The Sawab team has noticed that the bot still has significant limitations in its performance in Arabic language or its application in the Arabic context. "We still mostly use English prompts, as there are more mistakes made in Arabic. We also noticed that there is a lack of understanding on local realities on the ground, especially when the task concerns smaller communities or villages in Lebanon," recalls Al-Amin. One major caveat is that the bot would never admit to its own limitations or knowledge gaps, but would rather provide made-up answers, but with a strong degree of confidence. AI tools to detect misinformation such as AI generated images, also lag behind their English-language counterparts. "They are still bad at detecting AI-generated images. Every time the tools used to generate AI content improve, the more difficult our mission becomes, as the gap widens," explains Al-Amin. Election periods make it harder for users to spot disinformation online Image: Vahid Salemi/AP/picture alliance With municipal elections taking place in Lebanon in 2025 and parliamentary elections in 2026, the Sawab team anticipates a high rise in disinformation, as well as its spread by chatbots and on coordinated accounts, and has already started to prepare for what is yet to come. Fact-checkers from the Middle East operate in very specific country contexts, but there is one thing that unites them all: Giving up is not an option. They all do their best to respond to each request and deliver any fact-check demanded. Despite all the hardships and difficulties they face, they continue to do their work and follow ambitious aims. "We do whatever we can. We hope that the bot could help to reduce hate speech, incitement as well as gender-based disinformation," says Riham from Kashif. The Middle Eastern fact-checkers try to make the region a better and safer place through verified information: One step at a time — and now assisted by machine effort through their narrative detection tool, chatbots or even virtual team members. Jenna Kleinwort is a project manager in the Middle East and North Africa Department at DW Akademie and a member of the DW Akademie's Community of Practice on Artificial Intelligence. She holds an MSc in Economics of the Middle East from Marburg University. She wrote her thesis on Female Entrepreneurs in the United Arab Emirates, where she also worked as a reporter. Fluent in Arabic, Jenna has spent over seven years in North Africa and the Gulf region. She is also a 2023 Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism.
Int'l Business Times
4 days ago
- Int'l Business Times
'So Sad': Israelis Shocked By Iran Strike On Hospital
The damage was hard to comprehend for many at Israel's Soroka Hospital as staff took stock of the wreckage after a strike by an Iranian ballistic missile on Thursday left part of the facility in ruins. The strike in the southern city of Beersheba caused extensive damage to the hospital's entrance hall and several departments, including the ophthalmology unit on the third floor of the surgical building. The explosion shattered windows, hurling glass across the hospital, brought ceilings crashing down, destroyed medical equipment and left corridors in disarray. "It's so sad, I never thought something like this could happen. Never. It's only medical professionals here, and patients... and look what happened to us," Wasim Hin, an ophthalmologist at Soroka Medical Centre, told AFP. "Here we have new equipment, everything was destroyed." Yael Tiv, an officer in the Home Front command, said the damage was the result of a "direct hit" by a missile. "You can see the damage inside. Shattered windows, the ceilings that fell. It's a really awful scenario inside," she added. The hospital's director and other workers said that lives had been saved because the structure hit in the attack had been evacuated in recent days. "It's a miracle. The building had just been evacuated," maintenance worker Kevin Azoulay told AFP. Even still, 40 people sustained injuries during the attack. "Several wards were completely demolished and there is extensive damage across the entire hospital with damage to buildings, structures, windows, ceilings across the medical centre," director Shlomi Codish told journalists. Israel's multi-layered air defence systems have managed to intercept most of the missiles and drones targeting the country during the last week of fighting between Israel and Iran. But some have managed to slip through, wreaking widespread damage at the point of impact. The Soroka complex is the largest hospital in southern Israel and a primary medical centre for Bedouin communities in the Negev Desert, as well as for wounded Israeli soldiers returning from the war in Gaza. The UN's World Health Organisation leader on Thursday denounced attacks on health facilities in the Iran-Israel war as "appalling". At the WHO annual assembly last month, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had also urged Israel to show "mercy" in its bombardment and siege of Gaza, saying it was "wrong to weaponise" food and medical supplies. Arriving at the scene of Soroka Hospital to survey the damage Thursday, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed swift revenge for the attack. "We will make the tyrants in Tehran pay a heavy price," Netanyahu said in a post on X. Iranian authorities later said the barrage had targeted a nearby Israeli command post and intelligence base, according to a report published by the state news agency IRNA. Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also weighed in. "In this operation, the regime's command and intelligence centre near a hospital was targeted with highly accurate and guided missiles," the force said in a statement. Elsewhere in Israel on Thursday, buildings were also damaged in the central towns of Ramat Gan and Holon, close to coastal hub Tel Aviv, which has been repeatedly targeted by Iranian missiles since war broke out between the countries last Friday. "The truth is, God is with us and the government must keep doing what it's doing," said Renana, a resident of a building hit in Ramat Gan. Back at Soroka Hospital, Boris Knaizer, who heads the ophthalmology department, was at a loss. He said the department treated around 50,000 patients a year. "And now, how are we going to receive them?" he asked. "We have no idea, we have no space, we have no rooms, everything has been destroyed."
Int'l Business Times
5 days ago
- Int'l Business Times
Canada Needs 'Bold Ambition' To Poach Top US Researchers
Like Europe, Canada is looking to attract top US scientists who may want to evade President Donald Trump's crackdown on universities and research institutions. But to succeed, Canada will need to summon something it has at times lacked, namely "bold ambition," the head of the country's largest hospital chain told AFP. Trump's funding cuts for scientific research are freeing up talent and "creating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to recruit, said Kevin Smith, the chief executive of Toronto's University Health Network (UHN). To seize that opportunity, Canada has to ditch its traditional "incrementalist" approach, Smith added. "Let's not say good enough is good enough. Let's say excellent is where we need to go." Experts say Trump's policies could trigger a tectonic shift in the global competition for the world's brightest minds. For decades, deep-pocketed US universities backed by federal support have scooped up talent, including in biomedical research. But Trump's administration has already slashed billions of dollars in research grants affecting various institutions, including most notably Harvard University. Programs affected by the National Institutes of Health's cuts include studies on gender, the health effects of global warming, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer. France and the European Union are already trying to woo disgruntled US researchers. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said last month that the EU would launch a new incentives package worth 500 million euros ($577 million) to make the 27-nation bloc "a magnet for researchers". Smith and UHN's vice president for science and research, Brad Wouters, argued that Canada -- and particularly its largest city, Toronto -- are well placed to compete for US talent. English-speaking, culturally familiar, and geographically close to major US research centers in New England and New York, Toronto boasts a hospital network and research ecosystem regularly ranked among the world's best. The city has already poached three high-profile academics from Yale University, although all work in the arts. The group -- who study fascism -- announced last month in a stirring New York Times video that they were leaving the United States to take up positions in Toronto. "I'm leaving to the University of Toronto because I want to do my work without the fear that I will be punished," one of the professors, Jason Stanley, said in the video. Wouters told AFP that since Trump's election, UHN "started to see a talent pool that was a notch higher than what we normally see" for vacant positions, with leading US-based scientists initiating inquiries about opportunities in Toronto. UHN has launched a plan to create 100 medical research positions through its own fundraising but wants institutions across Canada to attract 1,000 new scientists. Reaching that target will require government support, and confronting an ingrained Canadian mindset that prioritizes sharing healthcare resources equally across the vast country. The plan will face "a bit of a collision between the peanut butter spread of equality versus elitism," Smith said. "That isn't always easy for governments or for elected we're pretty hopeful," he added. Matthew Lebo, a political scientist at Ontario's Western University, agreed Trump's policies have created an unprecedented opportunity for brain gain in Canada. But he voiced concern the country wouldn't mobilize. "Canada has a history of being comfortable playing a supporting role," he told AFP. "There is just an inherent lack of ambition." Lebo noted that while some US-based researchers may be concerned about crackdowns on their work, others might eye Canada for personal reasons, including the desire to live in a country where reproductive and LGBTQ rights are more firmly safeguarded. While he hasn't yet seen signs of broad national action, he said "it wouldn't take deep thought to catch up." "It takes some big number (of dollars) and a plan." The CN tower looms over the Toronto skyline AFP
