TV News LIES

As the US-Israel war on Iran began last week and Gaza’s crossings were shut, panic spread through the densely populated enclave, raising fears of a famine returning. 

Palestinians rushed to markets to stock up on essentials, as soaring prices and shortages of key items, particularly vegetables, signalled the impact of the closures.

Gaza depends almost entirely on border crossings for the entry of food and essential goods, meaning any sudden closure is quickly reflected in local markets and household budgets.

For Ibrahim Madoukh, a father of eight from al-Sahaba neighbourhood in Gaza City, the price surge has already begun to affect his family’s fragile livelihood.

Since the October ceasefire, Madoukh has been selling falafel from a small stall to support his family. Demand had been steady, he said, largely because he kept his prices low.But rising ingredient costs have forced him to increase prices, while customers - many already struggling financially - are buying less.

“The economic situation in Gaza has been deteriorating since the war,” Madoukh said. “Many people can no longer afford what is available in the market.”

After hearing about the crossing closures, Madoukh rushed to buy supplies before they disappeared. Instead, he found markets crowded with residents trying to do the same.

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Nearly three-quarters of respondents to a new Quinnipiac University poll do not support the U.S. sending ground troops into Iran, as the conflict in the Middle East hits 10 days on Monday.

The survey, released Monday, found that 20 percent of respondents support such a move, while 74 percent oppose it. Just 3 percent of Democrats, 19 percent of independents and 37 percent of Republicans support putting boots on the ground.

More than half of surveyed Republicans, in fact, are against such an action. Some members of President Trump’s MAGA base, including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Tucker Carlson, have criticized the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for launching the war.

Trump has left the door open to putting boots on the ground in Iran, telling reporters Saturday he “possibly” could do so.

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It is near impossible to make sense – at least from the justifications on offer – of what US President Donald Trump really hopes to achieve with his and Israel's blatantly illegal war of aggression on Iran.

Is it to destroy an Iranian nuclear weapons programme for which there has never been any tangible evidence, and which Trump claimed just a few months ago to have "completely and totally obliterated" in an earlier lawbreaking attack?

Or is it intended to force Tehran back to negotiations on its nuclear energy enrichment programme that were brought prematurely to an end when the US launched its unprovoked attack – talks, we should note, that were made necessary because in 2018, during his first term, Trump tore up the original deal with Iran?

Or is the war supposed to browbeat Iran into greater flexibility, even though Trump blew up the talks at the very moment Oman, the chief mediator, insisted that Tehran had capitulated on almost every one of Washington's onerous demands and that a deal was "within our reach"?

Or are the air strikes designed to "liberate" Iranians, even though the early victims included at least 165 civilians in a girls' school, most of them children aged between 7 and 12?

Or is the aim to pressure Iran to give up its ballistic missiles – the only deterrence it has against attack, and which would leave it utterly defenceless against US and Israeli malevolent designs?

Or did Washington believe Tehran was about to strike first, even though Pentagon officials have confided to congressional staff that there was zero intelligence an attack was about to happen?

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A new video released by Iranian state media shows what appears to be a U.S. cruise missile striking a compound where around 175 Iranian students and staff were killed at a girl's school a little over a week ago.

The seven-second video was posted by Mehr News, an Iranian state news agency. It shows the missile slamming into a building inside a walled compound – likely a health clinic that was also inside the perimeter of what was at one point an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base.

The strike appears to have taken place shortly after the girl's school was hit. In the new video, smoke is already visibly rising from the part of the compound where the school was located. State media reports put the death toll from the bombing at somewhere between 165 and 180, many of them students.

Although the quality of the video makes precisely identifying the munition difficult, the missile appears consistent with a Tomahawk cruise missile, according to Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of global security at Middlebury College. The U.S. is the only country known to have Tomahawk missiles, and U.S. officials say the military was operating in the south of the country at the time of the strike.

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US investigators probing an attack on a school in Iran that killed 165 people believe it is most likely that the United States military was responsible for the strike.

Two US officials told Reuters they were still looking into Saturday's attack in the city of Minab, which Middle East Eye revealed was a "double-tap" strike that killed scores of young girls and boys, and not reached a final conclusion.

While they said further evidence could potentially emerge exonerating the US, their initial findings chime with a number of other reports on the incident.

Some social media accounts had misleadingly suggested the school was bombed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), but this has been debunked.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Reuters that "while the Department of War is currently investigating this matter, the Iranian regime targets civilians and children, not the United States of America". Israel also said it is investigating the incident.

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Israel's military said it launched a "broad wave" of strikes on Iran's capital of Tehran targeting regime infrastructure, with additional strikes in Beirut's southern suburbs. Iran responded early Friday with retaliatory strikes on Israel.

Since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, more than 1,300 people there have been killed according to the humanitarian organization Iranian Red Crescent, including Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and more than 160 people in a strike on a girls school. The United Nations refugee agency says about 100,000 people fled Tehran in the first two days of the attacks that began Feb. 28.

In retaliation, Iran has attacked Israel and launched missiles and drones in countries that host U.S. military bases, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

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