Tag: Israel

Israel has ordered more evacuations in and around Gaza’s second-largest city of Khan Younis, followed by heavy bombardment, as the military’s offensive shifted to the southern half of the territory where Israeli officials assert that leaders of the Hamas militant group are hiding.

This is as the death toll from Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has surged to 15,523 since the start of the conflict on Oct. 7, the Health Ministry in the besieged Palestinian enclave announced yesterday.

“The toll of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip reached 15,523 martyrs” since Oct. 7, ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qedra said in a news conference.

The number of wounded through the same period has risen to 41,316, Al-Qedra added.

On the number of killed healthcare personnel, al-Qedra confirmed that total at 281, with hundreds injured. Additionally, 56 ambulances and the same number of health facilities have been completely destroyed, while 20 hospitals are out of service, along with 46 primary care centers, he added.

Al-Qedra noted that Israeli forces arrested four paramedics on Saturday despite their prior coordination, as they were heading northward from Khan Yunis in the south to evacuate the wounded.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip said they were running out of places to go in the sealed-off territory that borders Israel and Egypt. Many of its 2.3 million people are crammed in the south after Israel ordered civilians to leave the north in the early days of the war, which was sparked by the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other militants that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel.

The United Nations estimates that 1.8 million Gazans have been displaced.

Heavy bombardment was reported overnight into Sunday around Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, as well as parts of the north that had been the focus of Israel’s shattering air and ground offensive. Juliette Toma, director of communications at the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said nearly 958,000 displaced people were in 99 United Nations facilities in the southern Gaza Strip.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk urged an end to the war, saying civilian suffering was “too much to bear”.

Hopes for another temporary truce were fading. A weeklong cease-fire that expired Friday facilitated the release of dozens of the around 240 Gaza-held Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. But Israel has called its negotiators home.

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The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has urged Israel to avoid significant new mass displacement and do more to protect civilians. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris also told Egypt’s president that “under no circumstances” would the U.S. permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, an ongoing siege of Gaza or the redrawing of its borders.

On the ground in Gaza, there was frustration and mourning. Outside a Gaza City hospital, a dust-covered boy named Saaed Khalid Shehta dropped to his knees beside the bloodied body of his little brother Mohammad, one of several bodies laid out after people said their street was hit by airstrikes. He kissed him.

An American warship and multiple commercial ships came under attack in the Red Sea, the Pentagon said yesterday.

The move potentially marks a major escalation in a series of maritime attacks in the Middle East linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

The Pentagon said: “We’re aware of reports regarding attacks on the USS Carney and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and will provide information as it becomes available.”

The Carney is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and it remained unclear what damage, if any, the vessels sustained in the attacks.

The Pentagon did not identify where it believed the fire came from. However, Houthi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree claimed the attacks, saying the first vessel was hit by a missile and the second by a drone while in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

He described the ships as allegedly ignoring warnings from Houthi officials prior to the attack.

Israel published video what it described as a tunnel dug by Palestinian militants under the Gaza Strip’s Shifa Hospital, a focus of its search-and-destroy missions against Hamas militants.

 While acknowledging that it has a network of hundreds of kilometres of secret tunnels, bunkers and access shafts throughout the Palestinian enclave, Hamas has denied that these are in civilian infrastructure like hospitals.

 In Sunday’s update on operations at Shifa, the Israeli military said its engineers uncovered a tunnel 10 metres deep and running 55 metres to a blast-proof door.

 “This type of door is used by the Hamas terrorist organisation to block Israeli forces from entering the command centres and the underground assets belonging to Hamas,” said a military statement accompanied by video showing a narrow passage with arched concrete roofing, ending at a grey door.

 At least 31 very sick, premature babies have been evacuated from Shifa Hospital and will be transported to a hospital in Egypt, the World Health Organisation said Sunday.

 Meanwhile, two Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank.

On the diplomatic front, Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told ABC’s “This Week” show that Israel is “hopeful we can get a significant number of hostages (held by Hamas) freed in the next few days,” with an accompanying short pause in the fighting, possibly lasting five days.

 U.S. news reports say about 50 hostages, particularly women and children, of the estimated 240 held by Hamas could be returned to Israel, but it is unclear whether and how many Palestinian prisoners held by Israel might be released.

Herzog refused to call any cessation in fighting a cease-fire, signaling that Israel plans to resume its attack on Hamas targets after the pause ends.

White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the U.S. believes it is “closer than we have been perhaps at any point since these negotiations [over the hostage release] began weeks ago.” He said, “There are areas of difference and disagreement that have been narrowed, if not closed out entirely,” while adding that no deal has been reached.

“One of the challenges associated with this is we’re not on the ground in Gaza, the United States,” Finer said. “We are not in direct contact with Hamas. We do that only through intermediaries. And so, we don’t have perfect fidelity about exact numbers of hostages, including numbers who are still alive.”

Dozens of displaced Palestinian civilians were killed or wounded Saturday in Israeli airstrikes, including one on a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees reported.

“The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help,” wounded survivor Ahmed Radwan told The Associated Press by phone of Israel’s attack on the camp’s Fakhoura school. Photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

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In a statement Sunday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “I am deeply shocked that two UNRWA schools were struck in less than 24 hours in Gaza.”

“This war is having a staggering and unacceptable number of civilian casualties, including women and children, every day. This must stop. I reiterate my call for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.”

The Israeli military said that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area “with the aim of hitting terrorists” while trying to minimize civilian harm.

On Saturday, the military warned civilians in parts of southern Gaza to leave. On Friday, Israel had issued new warnings for Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate from areas of the Gaza Strip where Israeli officials earlier had told people it was safe.

“We’re asking people to relocate,” Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC. “I know it’s not easy for many of them, but we don’t want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire.”

Palestinian authorities now say more than 13,000 people have been killed in Gaza, and 30,000 injured since Israel launched a major air and ground offensive in response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack that killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Britain, the European Union and others.

Israel said 57 of its soldiers had been killed in Gaza since it entered the territory.

On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 47 people in Khan Younis and the vicinity, medics said.

One airstrike hit two apartment buildings in Khan Younis, killing 26 Palestinians and wounding 23, health officials said. Six more were killed a few kilometers north when a house in the town of Deir Al-Balah was bombed, health officials said.

Internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip on Saturday, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has alleged a plot by Israel to wipe out the people of Palestine.

In a three-page article on the ongoing Israel attack on Gaza (see pages 8, 9 and 10), Fani-Kayode accused renowned and influential pro-Israeli columnist, author and commentator, Ben Shapiro, of championing the evil agenda.

He condemned Shapiro’s “racist slurs” against Arabs, noting that it is reminiscent of the language employed by Afrikaans-speaking White Boers of apartheid South Africa who regarded black South Africans and black people as nothing but sub-human, low born field hands and slaves.

The former Minister of Culture and Tourism lamented that hundreds of Palestinian bodies are decomposing in the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital, on the streets and under the rubble, and there is no opportunity to bury them with the respect they deserve.

“This is not about fighting Hamas or seeking the terrorists out for destruction; it is about killing or displacing every single Palestinian man, woman and child, and turning their entire race into a distant and fading memory,” he wrote.

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The Sadaukin Shinkafi and Wakilin Doka Potiskum described Shapero as “a trouble little man who has an insatiable appetite for the spilling of children’s blood and whose secret desire is to subject every single Arab (both Christian and Muslim) to mass murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing and wipe them all off the surface of the earth.”

“Your hateful and provocative rhetoric and disgraceful and deeply insulting commentary about Islamic and Christian faiths over the years and your unacceptable insults on the greatest, most noble, most righteous and most revered prophet of Islam, Prophet Muhammad (Sallallahu ‘Alayhi Wa Sallam) coupled with your denigrating and demeaning description of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ… as ‘just another Jew who died for a cause’ has not gone unnoticed,” he added.

.See full text on pages 8,9 & 10.