by tyler | Oct 25, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Palestinian officials say hundreds were killed by a massive blast at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday, as humanitarian concerns mount over Israel’s deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the enclave’s population.
Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was sheltering thousands of displaced people when it was bombed Tuesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement. Many victims are still under the rubble, it added.
Palestinian officials blamed ongoing Israeli airstrikes for the lethal incident. But the Israel Defense Forces has “categorically” denied any involvement in the hospital attack, blaming instead a “failed rocket launch” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, a rival Islamist militant group in Gaza.
“We did not strike that, and that the intelligence that we have suggests that it was a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad, and I want to add, categorically, that we do not intentionally strike any sensitive facilities, any sensitive facilities, and definitely not hospitals,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN.
Gaza has been under siege by Israel for more than a week, in response to the deadly incursion by Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the coastal enclave, home to 2.2 million people. Hospitals meanwhile are struggling to tend to the wounded across the territory, operating with shortages of electricity and water.
Vital humanitarian aid is meanwhile piling up at Gaza’s shuttered border, despite diplomatic efforts to open a corridor from Egypt. The United Nations and other officials have said they need assurance of safe passage for any potential aid convoys.
Amid growing international pressure to address the crisis, US President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday, an extraordinary wartime visit that follows intense efforts by Secretary of State Antony Blinken across the Middle East.
Biden was also due to attend a summit scheduled in Amman, the capital of Jordan, with several Arab leaders. However, the summit was canceled in the wake of the hospital blast.
Instead of the planned meeting, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would travel back to Ramallah for an urgent meeting of the Palestinian leadership.
The Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the center of Gaza City was sheltering thousands of people who had been forcibly evacuated, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Hamas, which controls the enclave, said more than 500 people were killed by the bombing. The Palestinian Health Ministry earlier said preliminary estimates indicate that between 200 to 300 people died in the attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed the “barbaric terrorists in Gaza” for “attacking” the hospital on Tuesday.
“Whoever brutally murdered our children is also murdering their children,” he added.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari later told CNN the IDF has communications between militants in Gaza “saying this is an Islamic Jihad event” as well as drone footage showing strike impact on the hospital’s parking lot, but not the hospital itself.
Hagari said the IDF will soon release that footage and audio of the intercepted communications.
As Israeli and Gazan officials blame the other for the hospital tragedy, protests have sprung up in a number of Middle Eastern cities including Amman, where protesters attempted to reach the Israeli embassy.
More than a week of Israeli bombardment has killed at least 3,000 people, including 1,032 girls and 940 boys, and wounded 12,500 in Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Tuesday. Casualties in Gaza over the past 10 days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014.
While the IDF has said it does not target hospitals, the UN and Doctors Without Borders say Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.
On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes hit two densely populated refugee camps and an UNRWA school housing displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 18 people and injured scores, Palestinian officials said.
The IDF said that high-level Hamas commander Ayman Nofal was killed in the airstrikes in Gaza on Tuesday.
In the occupied West Bank at least 61 people have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Tuesday. At least 20 humanitarian workers from the UN, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have been killed in Gaza, the UN said.
Meanwhile, health services within Gaza are on the brink and food and water supplies are running low. Twenty out of 23 hospitals were offering partial services because fuel reserves are “almost totally depleted,” the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) warned on Tuesday.
UN agencies have warned that shops are less than a week away from running out of available food stocks and that that Gaza’s last seawater desalination plant had shut down, bringing the risk of further deaths, dehydration and waterborne diseases.
Hospitals have been receiving dozens of bodies from different areas of south Gaza, the director of Gaza hospitals, Dr. Mohammad Zaqout, told CNN. The toll includes dozens of victims from air strikes in Rafah.
The Palestinian Interior Ministry said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 49 people in strikes on the southern Gaza cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN he was “not aware of any strikes specifically in those areas but they could have happened.”
Urgent calls for help are growing on both sides of the crossing as aid amasses on the Egyptian side of the border.
Blinken on Tuesday said the the United States and Israel “have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza.”
But on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, a miles long convoy of humanitarian assistance awaiting entry into Gaza, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN.
“Until now, there is no safe passage that has been granted” as they do not “have any authorization or clear, secure routes for those convoys to be able to enter safely and without any possibility of their being targeted,” he said.
He added that the crossing was bombed four times in the past few days.
Beyond the border crossing, moving aid to those in need is extremely complex in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly hit UN facilities in the past week.
“We need to have areas where humanitarians can move through safely, where people who are receiving humanitarian aid can receive that aid safely,” UN spokesman Dujarric told CNN in a press briefing Tuesday.
“The last thing you would want to see is creating distribution points where people receive that aid are not safe.”
WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told CNN the UN health agency had struck an agreement with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to open the Rafah crossing for aid – but Israel’s strikes rendered the facility unsafe, thereby halting the movement of crucial supplies.
On Tuesday, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the only things that should be entering Gaza “are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid” until Hamas releases hostages, he wrote on Telegram.
On the Gaza side, large numbers of evacuees have gathered by the crossing, part of the mass displacement that has seen at least 1 million people flee their homes in the past week alone, according to UNRWA.
One family of five Palestinian-Americans, all US citizens, drove to Rafah on Monday after hearing the borders would be opened but to no avail, said Haifa Kaoud, whose husband Hesham is among the five stuck in Gaza.
Satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies show four 30-foot (9-meter) craters blocking the roadway at the border crossing closest to the Egyptian gate, along with concrete slabs.
Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to ease the conflict. On Monday, the UN Security Council rejected a Russian resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire after it failed to get enough votes.
Several countries including the US, the United Kingdom and France voted against it because the draft did not condemn Hamas for the October 7 attack, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said killed at least 1,400 people with scores taken hostage.
This includes French-Israeli woman, Mia Schem, who was shown in the first hostage video released by Hamas. Her mother, Keren Scharf Schem implored world leaders “to bring my baby back home” when speaking to reporters Tuesday.
CNN cannot independently verify where and when the video of Schem, 21, was taken and what condition she is currently in.
Regional leaders raised concerns of fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah in the north, and Syria, as strikes at the border become a flashpoint for wider conflict.
The IDF said on Tuesday shots were fired towards several locations on the security fence between Israel and Lebanon.
At the same time, Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, warned if the “atrocities” against Gaza persist, “Muslims and resistance forces could lose patience,” and no-one would be able to prevent their actions.
After Hamas’ incursion on October 7, militants fired shots from Lebanon that were intercepted by Israel, leading to a deadly exchange of fire.
On Friday evening local time an Israeli strike killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah who was also from south Lebanon. The assault wounded at least six other reporters.
A CNN video analysis found that the journalists were wearing vest jackets clearly marked as press.
And on Tuesday, Israeli strikes killed at least four people in Alma al-Shaab, in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
Two Hezbollah fighters were killed in confrontations on Tuesday, the militant group said. It is unclear whether they are part of the death toll reported by the Red Cross.
CORRECTION: This article on the Gaza hospital blast initially did not clearly attribute claims about Israel’s responsibility to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza. Israel later said a “misfired” rocket by militant group Islamic Jihad caused the blast and produced evidence to support its claim. US President Joe Biden said the Israeli position is backed by US intelligence. CNN’s forensic analysis of images and videos suggests a rocket fired from within Gaza caused the blast, not an Israeli airstrike.
An earlier version of this story also misidentified the embassy protesters attempted to reach in Amman. It was the Israeli embassy.
by tyler | Oct 25, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Tempers flared at the United Nations on Tuesday amid ceasefire calls, as aid groups and doctors in Gaza warn that power shortages threaten the lives of vulnerable infants and patients.
Aid agencies have been calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, with one saying at least 2,000 children in Gaza have been killed in the past few weeks, as Israel intensified its bombing campaign in the besieged strip.
Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said Monday the country is preparing for a “multilateral operation” on the militant group Hamas that controls Gaza from the “air, ground, and sea.”
The country’s leadership has vowed to wipe out Hamas in response to its October 7 deadly terror attacks and kidnap rampage in which 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.
Inside Gaza, cut off from the world by a near total blockade, Israeli airstrikes have decimated entire neighborhoods, leveling homes, schools and mosques. CNN drone footage from Monday showed the level of destruction across parts of the strip, with whole streets flattened in the al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City and a row of destroyed buildings known as al-Zahra towers in central Gaza.
Latest figures from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said the death toll resulting from Israeli strikes on the strip has reached at least 5,087, including 2,055 children.
As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens, the international community has struggled to find consensus.
The US has rebutted calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, with National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby telling CNN on Monday that Hamas must first release hostages held in Gaza.
China, Russia and Slovenia are some of the countries to have called for ceasefire, while Brazil and Ireland have proposed humanitarian “pauses” in the fighting.
Emotions ran high at the UN Security Council on Tuesday after Secretary General António Guterres appealed for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”
“Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel – and then continuing to bomb the south itself,” Guterres said.
“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres also said. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.”
He said that the “appalling acts” of Hamas “cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Excellencies, even war has rules.”
The backlash from Israeli diplomats was swift.
Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called on Guterres “to resign immediately” after his remarks and said he was “not fit to lead the UN,” writing on social media. And Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who was at the United Nations on Tuesday, said he would not meet with Guterres and that “there is no place for a balanced approach.”
“Hamas must be erased off the face of the planet!” Cohen wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Israel’s “right to defend itself” was affirmed in the Security Council by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He added that “humanitarian pauses must be considered” to allow aid to reach civilians in Gaza – notably avoiding use of the word “ceasefire.”
Blinken also told the council that “Israel must take all possible precautions to avoid harm to civilians” and called on Hamas to cease using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
Fuel means life in Gaza. Without fuel, water cannot be pumped or desalinated, generators that power hospitals – that keep incubators, ventilators and dialysis machines running and to sterilize surgical equipment – will fail.
Six hospitals in Gaza have been forced to close due to a lack of fuel, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
“In addition to the hospitals that have had to close due to damage and attacks, six hospitals across the Gaza Strip have already shut down due to lack of fuel,” the WHO’s statement reads.
“Unless vital fuel and additional health supplies are urgently delivered into Gaza,” the WHO warned “thousands of vulnerable patients risk death” unless “vital fuel and additional health supplies” were delivered.
Save the Children said Monday that over 1 million children are “trapped” in Gaza with no safe place to go and warned of the devastating impacts of lacking medication and electricity to power vital health infrastructure in the enclave.
And a major United Nations agency in Gaza warned that it will have to stop aid operations in Gaza on Wednesday unless fuel is allowed into the enclave.
“If we do not get fuel urgently, we will be forced to halt our operations in the #GazaStrip as of tomorrow night,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) wrote on social media Tuesday.
Gaza needs at least 160,000 litres (42,267 gallons) of fuel a day, not just to fuel UNRWA facilities, but also to power hospitals, bakeries, and other basic necessities, a spokeswoman for the organization, Juliette Touma, said.
Despite the urgency, no fuel trucks have entered Gaza as part of a humanitarian aid convoy from Egypt’s Rafah border crossing over the weekend, according to Israeli and UN authorities.
However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff provided a glimmer of hope on Tuesday, saying efforts will be made to provide access to fuel to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. He reiterated Israel’s position that it would “not allow” the fuel to reach Hamas “so they can continue fighting against the citizens of Israel.”
“We will make sure there will be fuel in places where they need fuel to treat civilians,” said Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said, without providing further detail on how the IDF might get fuel to those most in need.
Earlier, Mark Regev, senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told CNN on Monday that Israel would not allow fuel into Gaza even if all hostages were released.
“At the moment we have no interest in more fuel going to the Hamas military machine and we have not authorized fuel, we have authorized medicine, we have authorized water. We’ve authorized foodstuffs, we’ve not authorized anything else,” Regev said.
“The government decision is that fuel doesn’t go in because it will be stolen by Hamas and it’ll be used by them to power rockets that are fired into Israel to kill our people.”
The UN is “watching closely” for signs that Hamas is diverting humanitarian aid meant for civilians in Gaza, and have not reported any such signs to date, the US State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Monday.
On Monday, Hamas freed two Israeli citizens – both older women – amid growing international pressure to secure the release of the rest of those abducted and taken to Gaza. One of the recently freed captives, 85-year-old grandmother Yocheved Lifshitz later described her ordeal after she was kidnapped by gunmen and taken to Gaza, saying she “went through hell.”
Their release follows that of two American hostages, Judith Tai Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie Raanan, who were freed on Friday.
National Security Council spokesman Kirby wouldn’t say Tuesday if the Israeli bombardment of Gaza was having an adverse effect on efforts to secure the safe extraction of transfer of hostages, telling CNN the Biden administration is still not sure on the location and status of American hostages being held by Hamas.
In Gaza, outbreaks of chickenpox, scabies, and diarrhea have emerged due to the deteriorating health environment, lack of sanitation, and consumption of water from unsafe sources, according to the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health based in the occupied West Bank.
Hospitals are nearing collapse, operating at more than 150% of their capacity and situations have become so dire that surgeries are being conducted without anesthesia, and in some cases, under the illumination of phone lights, the Palestinian Authority health ministry added.
Around 50,000 pregnant women are struggling to access health care, with about 166 unsafe births happening daily, and more than 5,000 women due to give birth in the next month, it said.
The Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City – the largest hospital in the enclave – has enough fuel to last a maximum of two days, according to senior surgeon Marwan Abusada on Monday.
Conditions in Al-Shifa are dire, with another doctor saying that without electricity, the hospital “will just be a mass grave” and “there’s nothing to do for these wounded.”
British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah told CNN overnight that the “system is disintegrating” and without a cease
fire and a proper humanitarian corridor, “there’s going to be an even larger catastrophe that the one that already exists here.”
The overwhelmed hospital has run out of burns dressings for the more than 100 patients in the facility with burns covering over 40% of their bodies, Abu-Sittah said. More than 150 patients on ventilators with critical injuries are relying on electricity to stay alive, he said.
Hospitals across Gaza are facing similar situations.
A neonatal doctor working in a hospital in southern Gaza told CNN Monday that premature babies relying on oxygen supplies will die if fuel is not urgently delivered into the enclave.
Hatem Edhair, head of Neonatal ICU at Nasser Medical Complex, said all non-emergency facilities have been turned off, as well as lights and air conditioning.
He said 11 babies – most weighing under 1.5 kilograms – are in his neonatal intensive care unit, with admission rates rising as residents from northern Gaza flee south.
Twenty more trucks carrying vital relief aid crossed into Gaza Monday, but aid agencies warn that the current rate of delivery will do little to address the needs of more than 2 million people living in the enclave.
The territory normally receives 455 aid trucks per day, according to the United Nations. That means that with the weekend deliveries, Gaza is more than 7,200 truckloads of aid short of what would normally have been received between October 7 and October 22, CNN calculations suggest.
That’s half of 1% – or one two-hundredth – of the amount of aid it ordinarily receives.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
by tyler | Oct 23, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Israel has widened its offensive against Hamas and its regional enemies, intensifying its bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, striking Hezbollah cells in Lebanon and targeting the occupied West Bank.
Hundreds were killed in Gaza after sustained aerial assaults on Monday morning, according to the health ministry in the isolated enclave, which is controlled by Hamas. The ministry said that 436 people, including 182 children, were killed in strikes overnight, and that most of those killed were from the southern part of Gaza.
Since October 7, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 5,087 people in Gaza, including 1,119 women and 2,055 children, the ministry said. The blasts have leveled entire neighborhoods, including schools and mosques, and devastated the already insufficient health care system.
A small number of relief aid trucks have been allowed to cross from Egypt into Gaza since the weekend, but relief agencies warn that the current rate of delivery will do little to address the needs of 2 million people living in the enclave.
Israeli strikes appear to be ramping up; overnight blasts on Sunday were among the most sustained bombardments of northern Gaza in the past two weeks, according to a CNN team on the ground in southern Israel. They came as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prepares for a potential ground operation in the besieged territory. Huge numbers of troops and tanks have already massed at the border.
Israel is preparing for a “multilateral operation” on Hamas from the “air, ground and sea,” Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant said Monday. After touring the Ashdod Navy base, Gallant released a video statement instructing Israel’s soldiers to “get ready.”
The Israeli siege of Gaza is a response to the October 7 murder and kidnap rampage by Hamas. IDF spokesman Hagari said the Israeli military now believes 222 people were kidnapped during Hamas’ October 7 attack.
CNN previously reported that the Biden administration has pressed Israel to delay its imminent invasion of Gaza to allow for the release of more Hamas hostages and aid into the enclave.
Amid US and Qatari efforts to free the hostages held by Hamas, a senior Israeli official told CNN Sunday there will be “no ceasefire” in Gaza.
A total of 34 trucks filled with desperately needed aid traveled into Gaza from Egypt over the weekend. But none carried fuel supplies, which is vital for running hospitals and treating water in the isolated territory. Israel has said fuel would be purloined by Hamas.
A further 20 trucks crossed Rafah into Gaza on Monday, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). But UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric warned that the current aid provisions reaching Gaza were “a drop in the bucket.”
“No fuel means no functioning water desalination. No fuel also means that humanitarian partners will have to focus almost their entire aid delivery operation on transporting water. It also means no bakeries and no hospitals,” the OCHA statement declared.
Aid workers and international leaders warned that the supplies were insufficient to combat the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Gaza, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it is a “drop in the ocean” of what is needed.
The territory normally receives 455 aid trucks per day, according to the United Nations. That means that with the weekend deliveries, Gaza is more than 7,200 truckloads of aid short of what would normally have been received between October 7 and October 22, CNN calculations suggest. That’s half of 1% – or one two-hundredth – of the amount of aid it ordinarily gets.
As the situation in the strip gets increasingly dire, doctors in Gaza hospitals are being forced to operate without morphine or painkillers due to shortages, according to Leo Cans from Doctors Without Borders.
“We currently have people being operated on without having morphine. It just happened to two kids,” said the head of mission in Jerusalem for the group also known as Médecins Sans Frontières.
“We have a lot of kids that are unfortunately among the wounded, and I was discussing with one of our surgeons, who received a 10-year-old yesterday, burnt on 60% of the body surface, and he didn’t end up having painkillers,” Cans continued.
“There is no justification at all to block these essential medicines to reach the population.”
Cans also acknowledged CNN’s reporting on parents who have resorted to writing their childrens’ names on their limbs in the event that either they or the children are killed.
Medical professionals have also described “catastrophic” conditions at one central Gazan hospital as electricity and fuel supplies run out and crippled medical facilities rapidly become overwhelmed with casualties.
Dr. Iyad Issa Abu Zaher, director general of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza, described a “bloody day” for his staff to CNN on Sunday, saying the hospital had received up to 166 bodies and more than 300 injured people.
“It’s impossible for any hospital in the world to admit this number of injured,” he said.
Videos obtained by CNN showed the hospital receiving more than a dozen bodies wrapped in shrouds, while grieving family members tried to identify them.
At another Gaza hospital, doctors have warned that most of the critically ill infants relying on ventilators in the neonatal unit will die if the electricity supply is interrupted.
“If the electricity is stopped, there will be catastrophic events inside this unit,” said Dr. Fu’ad al-Bulbul, head of the neonatal department Unit at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, in a video released by the Health Ministry in Gaza.
“We can save only one [or] two babies but, we cannot save all babies.”
Over the weekend, Israel called once again for civilians to leave northern parts of the strip – a warning that was condemned by the World Health Organization and which the Palestinian Red Crescent said amounted to a “death penalty for patients.”
Residents who chose to remain behind told CNN that no place was safe in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s heavy bombardment.
At least 26 people were killed in Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp – one of the largest in Gaza – the director of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza, Atef Al Kahlout told CNN. In the southern city of Rafah, 29 people were killed after four houses were struck, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza spokesperson Ashraf Al Qidra.
Large plumes of smoke were seen rising from the Gaza skyline after Israeli airstrikes on the strip, a live feed on Al-Jazeera showed. Reuters showed a large smoke cloud rising from Gaza and seen from southern Israel.
The bombs hit buildings in Rafah, Khan Younis, central Gaza and Gaza City, including homes, the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza said. The IDF said on Monday that it struck 320 “terror targets” in Gaza, including tunnels and “dozens of operational command centers” belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
“They want us all dead, they are whipping Gaza, this has nothing to do with a war against Hamas,” one resident of Jabalia, Mahmoud, said.
“My mother is paralyzed, she refuses to evacuate and says there is no safe place,” he said.
Another resident of Jabalia, Mohammad Salama, said he lost 18 family members in a strike on Monday morning, mostly women and children.
“There are no terrorists here, I swear on all my family members that I lost today, it’s only innocent civilians,” Salama said.
On Sunday, Hamas and Israeli forces engaged in limited clashes inside Gaza – in what is believed to be one of the first significant skirmishes on the ground inside the strip since the Islamist militants’ October 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
An IDF soldier was killed and three others were wounded during an operation in the area of Kibbutz Kissufim near Gaza on Sunday, according to IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Earlier, Hamas said its fighters had destroyed two Israeli military bulldozers and a tank in an ambush near the Gazan city of Khan Younis, forcing Israeli troops to retreat without their vehicles.
The United States and its allies have urged Israel to be strategic and clear about its goals during any ground operation in Gaza, warning against a prolonged occupation and placing an emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, although the past two weeks have seen more people killed in Gaza than during any previous conflict with Israel.
The mounting death toll has sparked growing protests across the Middle East and further afield as social media fills with imagery of the devastation Gazans are living through.
On Sunday, US President Joe Biden made a flurry of calls to world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, about the ongoing conflict and amid efforts by US officials seeking to keep it from widening.
The White House said Netanyahu and Biden “affirmed there will now be a continued flow” of humanitarian assistance to Gaza during their call.
As Israel readies its troops around Gaza, its military has also been engaged in flare-ups elsewhere, with increasing violence in the occupied West Bank and on its northern border with Lebanon.
The IDF has launched a series of raids and arrested dozens of alleged Hamas members in the West Bank since the attack on Israel earlier this month.
Two Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces raided the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah on Monday, according to a statement by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The Monday raid brings the total of those killed since October 7 in the occupied West Bank by both the IDF and Israeli settlers to 95, the ministry said.
The IDF told CNN that 15 wanted suspects were apprehended in the raid, 10 of whom it claimed were Hamas operatives, and that weapons and ammunition had been found.
On Sunday, the IDF launched an airstrike on the Al-Ansar mosque in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, which it said was being used by militant groups to plan for “an imminent terror attack.”
It would not say whether the strike came from a jet, in what would be the first fighter jet strike in the West Bank in nearly two decades.
Meanwhile, late Sunday and into Monday, the IDF said it struck cells belonging to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, an Iran-backed paramilitary movement, on the Lebanese side of the border, which it said had planned to launch attacks on Israel.
Netanyahu warned Sunday that if Hezbollah decides to enter the war, it will be crippled “with a force [it] cannot even imagine.”
by tyler | Oct 18, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Some of the United States’ closest Arab allies gave President Joe Biden the cold shoulder as he and his diplomats shuttled around the Middle East in an attempt to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a wider regional conflagration.
Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority canceled a planned meeting with Biden less than 24 hours before he was supposed to meet them for a four-way summit in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Wednesday. The cancellation followed a massive blast in Gaza’s Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital that reportedly killed hundreds of Palestinians. Palestinian officials blamed Israel for the hospital blast, while Israeli officials said it was caused by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket.
“The summit won’t be able to stop the war, which is what we want,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera early Wednesday, calling the hospital blast a war crime. “So, we decided not to hold it,” he said.
Biden arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the Israeli war cabinet. The president pledged continued backing of Israel and told Netanyahu that the hospital explosion “appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.” The National Security Council said Wednesday that the government currently believes Israel “is not responsible” for the blast.
CNN cannot independently verify what caused the explosion, nor the extent of casualties.
Arab leaders appear to be alarmed at Washington’s near-complete support for Israel in the war and are trying to distance themselves from the Biden administration as anger grows on the Arab street against the Jewish state. At least 3,478 people have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 attack on Israel by Gaza’s Hamas rulers, which killed at least 1,400 in the country.
After news of the hospital blast broke on Tuesday, anti-Israel protests erupted in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Iran and Turkey, and in Ramallah in the West Bank.
Arab leaders are also likely to be wary of protests at home spiraling as images of dead Palestinians stream in with round-the-clock coverage of the Gaza war on almost every Arabic news channel. Jordan is particularly vulnerable to protests as a large proportion of its population claims Palestinian descent.
Egypt on Wednesday declared three days of mourning for the Gaza hospital victims.
“What we have seen from Biden, we have probably not seen from any previous US president, in terms of being so emotionally attached to Israel,” said Abdul Khaleq Abdulla, a commentator from the United Arab Emirates who is attuned to official thinking. Arab states, he said, “are shocked as hell” by Biden’s perceived unwillingness to criticize Israel or bring a stop to the bloodshed.
“The feeling now is that he is a full partner in this crime committed against Palestinians,” he told CNN, adding that Arab states are now “trying to detach themselves, not to meet him, neglect him.”
Egypt and Jordan, both of which border Israel and the Palestinian territories, have notably pushed back against a US plan to establish a safe corridor for Palestinians fleeing Gaza in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, which borders Gaza.
Jordan’s King Abdullah warned Tuesday that the displacement of Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt is a “red line,” and said neither Jordan nor Egypt would accept refugees from Gaza. He said that any suggestion of the two countries taking in fleeing Gazans was a plan “by the usual suspects to try and create de facto issues on the ground,” suggesting that the refugees may not be allowed to return to their homes.
The US suggestion has been met with fury in the Arab world, where media outlets have said that it serves Israel’s interest to de-populate the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and even to re-occupy it, rendering the Palestinians homeless once again without prospects of return. Israel ruled Gaza from 1967 to 2005 and it settled Jews there during that period.
Egyptian newspapers have denounced the idea of Palestinians being expelled from their homes, saying it would be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to Israel’s creation. Most Gazans are already refugees whose ancestors came from areas that are now part of Israel.
In a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi spoke out against the prospect of moving Palestinians to the Sinai in charged words, saying that Israel, not Egypt, should take in the refugees.
“If there is an idea of expulsion (of Gazans), then there is the Naqab (Negev) desert in Israel, where Palestinians can be moved until Israel finishes its announced operation to liquidate the resistance or the armed groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the strip,” Sisi said.
He warned that the presence of Gazans in the Sinai could turn the peninsula into a base for anti-Israel militancy that would prompt Israel to strike Egypt.
Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, DC, said no Arab leader wants to be seen as facilitating the emptying out of Gaza.
Sisi is “working very hard to create some distance between himself and his Western partners on this issue, to insulate himself from what could become a lot of public criticism and anger,” he said.
Sisi’s comments came a day after his foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that just as Europe and the US are “sensitive” about the idea of refugee influx, so is Egypt.
“Why should Egypt be presumed to allow the influx of 1 or 2 million people?” Shoukry told CNN Tuesday, adding that the country already hosts nine million refugees. He said he didn’t understand the purpose of the transfer of Palestinians, adding that it could be “intentional.”
Kaldas said Western governments that have fraternized with Arab autocrats have often seen their ability to disregard public opinion as a benefit. That may not be true, he added, especially now.
“The reality is that even autocracies have populations with opinions and passions and breaking points,” Kaldas said. “And this is certainly something that has infuriated everybody in Egypt pretty much.”
CNN’s Akanksha Sharma, Hamdi Alkhshali, DJ Judd, Eyad Kourdi, Tim Lister, Chloe Liu, Ben Wedeman, Celine Alkhaldi and Abeer Salman contributed to this report.
by tyler | Oct 18, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Protests erupted across the Middle East following the deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital, with Israeli and Palestinian officials trading accusations over who was to blame as US President Joe Biden arrived in Tel Aviv.
Hundreds of people were likely killed in the blast on Tuesday at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the center of Gaza City, where thousands were sheltering from Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.
Palestinian officials have blamed Israeli airstrikes for the lethal incident, but Israel has insisted it was not responsible.
In a televised news conference Wednesday, Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari claimed a lack of structural damage at the hospital proved the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were not involved in the explosion. He claimed IDF intelligence showed that Palestinian Islamic Jihad – a rival Islamist militant group to Hamas in Gaza – caused the explosion when one of its rockets launched at Israel misfired.
Hagari also said the IDF had intelligence of “communications between terrorists” of rockets misfiring, which included mention of the hospital.
Islamic Jihad denied Israel’s assertions describing them as “false and baseless” and claimed it does not use public facilities such as hospitals for military purposes, according to a statement Wednesday.
CNN cannot independently confirm what caused the explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital.
The blast marks a dangerous new phase in Israel’s war with Hamas, which threatens to spill over regionally, and has added to fears that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is spiraling “out of control.”
‘Unparalleled and indescribable’
Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Hamas-controlled Gaza, described “unparalleled and indescribable” scenes after the blast.
“Ambulance crews are still removing body parts as most of the victims are children and women,” Al-Qudra said. “Doctors were performing surgeries on the ground and in the corridors, some of them without anesthesia.”
Video geolocated by CNN from inside the al-Shifa Hospital, where some victims of the blast were taken, shows chaotic scenes with injured people packed into the crowded facility, doctors treating the wounded on the hospital floor and an emergency worker calling out as he carries an injured child.
Images show women crying out and terrified children covered in black dust huddled together on the hospital floor.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said that at least 471 people died and more than 300 were injured, in a statement on Wednesday.
Ghassan Abu-Sitteh, a doctor working with Médecins Sans Frontières, who was inside the hospital at the time of the blast,
Another witness, Adnan, told CNN the devastation that followed the blast was “beyond normal.”
“If you look over there on the roads, there are body parts all over it, heads and hands of people, hands and brains of children,” said Adnan, who would give only his first name. “It is truly indescribable.”
Calling the incident “unacceptable,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said hospitals are sacrosanct and the killings and violence must stop.
“Words fail me. Tonight, hundreds of people were killed – horrifically – in a massive strike… including patients, healthcare workers and families that had been seeking refuge in and around the hospital. Once again the most vulnerable,” Turk said in a statement.
Anger and protest spread
The blast has added fuel to rising anger in the region over the situation in Gaza.
Protests condemning the hospital explosion have erupted in multiple cities across the Middle East and North Africa, including in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Tunisia. Protests also rocked the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah as demonstrators clashed with Palestinian security forces.
There were also protests in Baghdad on Tuesday, where hundreds of protesters attempted to cross a bridge leading to the area that houses the US Embassy. The demonstrators, who were chanting anti-Israel slogans, were stopped by security forces.
In Lebanon, hundreds of protesters gathered in the square that leads to the US Embassy in Awkar, which is just north of the capital Beirut, and tried to break through security barriers, according to a CNN team there.
Protests continued on Wednesday when pro-Palestinian demonstrators had skirmishes with police near the US Embassy. Police fired tear gas and used water cannons against the protesters, according to local media and video footage released by AFP.
The US Embassy in Beirut advised Americans to avoid the Awkar area due to the protests, in a security alert on Wednesday.
Antisemitic attacks have also been on the rise. In Germany, security services are investigating after two Molotov cocktails were thrown in the direction of a Berlin synagogue in the early hours of Wednesday.
The fallout from the blast threatens to derail US diplomatic efforts to ease the humanitarian suffering in Gaza, where concerns are mounting over Israel’s deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the enclave.
More than a week of Israeli bombardment has killed at least 3,478 people and injured 12,500 in Gaza, according to Palestinian authorities.
President Biden’s high-security wartime visit to Tel Aviv to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marks his most forceful public show of support for Israel since the brutal October 7 Hamas attacks, in which the Islamist militant group killed at least 1,400 people and took more than 150 hostages, including children and the elderly.
Biden told the Israeli leader in a meeting on Wednesday that the hospital attack “appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.”
“But there’s a lot of people out there not sure,” he added.
Biden was scheduled to visit the Jordanian capital Amman after his trip to Tel Aviv, though a White House official said the trip was “postponed.”
Jordan canceled a planned Wednesday summit between Biden and the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pulled out of the meeting earlier Tuesday in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
Several nations, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have released statements condemning Israel following the explosion. Pakistan called it “inhumane and indefensible” and Palestinian observer to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israeli officials were being dishonest in blaming Islamic Jihad.
The hospital tragedy comes as health services in Gaza are on the brink, with no fuel to run electricity or pump water for life-saving critical functions. UN agencies have warned that stores are less than a week away from running out of food stocks and that Gaza’s last seawater desalination plant had shut down, bringing the risk of further deaths, dehydration and waterborne diseases.
While the IDF has said it does not target hospitals, the UN and Doctors Without Borders say Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.
Conditions are dire for the 2.2 million people caught in the escalating crisis and now trapped in Gaza and those on the ground warn that nowhere is safe from relentless Israeli airstrikes and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation.
Urgent calls for help are mounting and diplomatic efforts to secure a humanitarian corridor out of Gaza have ramped up in recent days.
Following Biden’s remarks in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu’s office said Israel will not block humanitarian aid going into Gaza from Egypt but it won’t not allow supplies into Gaza from its own territory until Hamas releases all hostages.
“In light of President Biden’s demand, Israel will not block humanitarian aid deliveries, as long as they consist water, food, and drugs for the civilian population in the southern Gaza Strip … and as long as the aid doesn’t reach Hamas,” the statement said.
The Rafah border crossing – the only entry point in and out of Gaza that Israel does not control – has remained extremely dangerous since the outbreak of hostilities.
On the Egyptian side of the crossing, a miles-long convoy of humanitarian assistance is awaiting entry into Gaza, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN Tuesday, explaining that until then no safe passage had been granted.
He added that the crossing was bombed four times in the past few days.
The situation in Gaza is now spiraling “out of control,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Wednesday.
Tedros said that WHO’s supplies have been stuck at the border for four days, adding “every second we wait to get medical aid in, we lose lives.”
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
A school and a hospital in Gaza were among the places lethally blasted by Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday as humanitarian concerns mount over ongoing deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the isolated population.
The strike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza is likely to have killed hundreds, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement, adding that there are still many people under the hospital rubble. CNN has asked the IDF for comment on hospital strike.
Gaza has been under siege by Israel for more than a week, in response to the deadly incursion by Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the coastal enclave, home to 2.2 million people. Hospitals meanwhile are struggling to tend to the wounded across the territory, operating with shortages of electricity and water.
Vital humanitarian aid is meanwhile piling up at Gaza’s shuttered border, despite diplomatic efforts to open a corridor from Egypt. UN and other officials have said they need assurance of safe passage for any potential aid convoys.
Amid growing international pressure to address the crisis, US President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday, an extraordinary wartime visit that follows intense efforts by Secretary of State Antony Blinken across the Middle East.
Israeli and US officials on Tuesday said humanitarian aid would be allowed into southern Gaza, but Israel’s national security adviser warned it would be stopped if Hamas intervened.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday “intense discussions” are underway regarding the agency’s aid efforts in Gaza.
However, it is unclear if any progress was made on the opening of the Rafah crossing, the only entry point to Gaza not controlled by Israel.
A Palestinian border official told CNN on Saturday that concrete slabs had been placed at the crossing, blocking all gates; Egypt, meanwhile, claims that Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza side of the border have made roads inoperable.
Satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies show four 30-foot (9-meter) craters blocking the roadway at the border crossing closest to the Egyptian gate, along with the concrete slabs.
Urgent calls for help are growing on both sides of the crossing.
On the Egyptian side, United Nations teams are waiting at the Rafah crossing, hoping they will be given the green light to enter Gaza and open a humanitarian corridor.
In Gaza, 20 out of 23 hospitals were offering partial services because fuel reserves are “almost totally depleted,” the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) warned on Tuesday.
“Critical life support systems will shut down and these hospitals – which are filled with the chronically ill and civilian casualties of war – will be thrust into darkness,” the agency said.
WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told CNN the UN health agency had struck an agreement with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to open the Rafah crossing for aid – but Israel’s strikes rendered the facility unsafe, thereby halting the movement of crucial supplies.
There are about 84,000 pregnant women in Gaza, with many delivering every day, Harris said. “Babies don’t care about bombs, they come when they come.”
The World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Tuesday shops have been unable to replenish supplies and will run out of available food stocks in “less than a week.”
UN humanitarian envoy Martin Griffiths is expected to travel to Cairo on Tuesday to aid diplomatic efforts, his office said. His trip will include a visit to Israel.
A convoy of trucks carrying aid supplies was traveling through Egypt toward the crossing early Tuesday, according to state-affiliated media outlet Al-Qahera News. Much of the aid already arrived days ago, sent by multiple countries and international organizations.
On the Gaza side, large numbers of evacuees have gathered by the crossing, part of the mass displacement that has seen at least 1 million people flee their homes in the past week alone, according to UNRWA.
One family of five Palestinian-Americans, all US citizens, drove to Rafah on Monday after hearing the borders would be opened but to no avail, said Haifa Kaoud, whose husband Hesham is among the five stuck in Gaza.
The family had been visiting relatives in Gaza when the war broke out; now, their loved ones in the US are desperately trying to find ways to bring them home as they face shrinking supplies of vital medication, clean water and electricity.
UNRWA said Tuesday that Gaza’s last seawater desalination plant had shut down, bringing the risk of further deaths, dehydration and waterborne diseases.
The UN agency added that one line of water was opened for three hours in southern Gaza on Monday, serving just half the 100,000 population of Khan Younis.
Over a week of Israeli bombardment has killed at least 3,000 people, including 1,032 girls and 940 boys, and wounded 12,500 in Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Israeli strikes on two densely populated refugee camps and an UNRWA school housing displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 18 people and injured scores, Palestinian officials said.
The IDF confirmed that high-level Hamas commander Ayman Nofal was killed in the airstrikes in Gaza on Tuesday.
In the occupied West Bank at least 61 people have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Tuesday. At least 20 humanitarian workers from the UN, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have been killed in Gaza, the UN said.
Casualties in Gaza over the past 10 days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014.
On Monday, the UN Security Council rejected a Russian resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire after it failed to get enough votes. Several countries including the US, the United Kingdom and France voted against it because the draft did not condemn Hamas for the October 7 attack, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said killed at least 1,400 people with scores taken hostage.
The family of a French-Israeli woman, Mia Schem, who was shown in the first hostage video released by Hamas, pleaded with world leaders “to bring my baby back home.”
CNN cannot independently verify where and when the video of Schem, 21, was taken and what condition she is currently in.
Her mother, Keren Scharf Schem, told reporters on Tuesday she did not know if her daughter was dead or alive until Monday and that all she knew is that she might have been kidnapped.
Relief workers across Gaza say they are desperately struggling to run emergency services with dwindling medical supplies, as displaced Palestinians continue to be struck by Israeli shelling.
“Yesterday [Monday] they [Israeli authorities] told us to evacuate, but we are the only hospital in the area who are providing emergency services to people, so we refused,” Dr Jamal Hams, medical director of the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah, in southern Gaza, said.
“There is no electricity, there is no water, there is no food, there are no drugs, no medications, it’s very difficult you cannot imagine,” he told CNN on Tuesday.
“The medical team are exhausted, we have no medical supplies and are suffering so much,” Hams added. “It’s a living disaster.”
Some Palestinians who fled to southern Gaza, after the IDF told them to leave northern regions, were killed by Israeli strikes at evacuation sites, according to Mahmoud Shalabi, the senior programme director for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).
In one instance, a doctor working inside Al-Aqsa Hospital told Shalabi 80 Palestinians were killed, including 60 who were internally displaced people from Gaza City.
The doctor was working in the largest hospital in central Gaza, located south of Wadi Gaza, where the Israeli military encouraged civilians to flee for safety ahead of an anticipated ground assault.
“Many internally displaced people have died last night in those alleged safe areas,” Shalabi said on Monday. “When the Israelis are talking about safe shelters, there are no safe shelters.”
The director of Gaza hospitals, Dr. Mohammad Zaqout, told CNN on Tuesday morning that since midnight hospitals had received 110 bodies from different areas of south Gaza
Zaqout said 40 bodies had been received at al Nasser hospital, while 60 victims of air strikes in Rafah had been received at al Najar hospital. Another ten bodies had arrived at the European hospital, he said.
Some of the victims had sheltered with family members or relatives after they fled northern Gaza.
The Palestinian Interior Ministry said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 49 people in strikes on the southern Gaza cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN he was “not aware of any strikes specifically in those areas but they could have happened,” pointing to the IDF’s military operation against Hamas.
Regional leaders raised concerns of fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah in the north, and Syria, as strikes at the border become a flashpoint for wider conflict.
The IDF said on Tuesday shots were fired towards several locations on the security fence between Israel and Lebanon.
At the same time, Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, warned if the “atrocities” against Gaza persist, “Muslims and resistance forces could lose patience,” and no-one would be able to prevent their actions.
After Hamas’ incursion on October 7, Palestinian militants fired shots from Lebanon that were intercepted by Israel, leading to a deadly exchange of fire.
On Friday evening local time an Israeli strike killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah who was also from south Lebanon. The assault wounded at least six other reporters.
A CNN video analysis found that the journalists were wearing vest jackets clearly marked as press.
And on Tuesday, Israeli strikes killed at least four people in Alma al-Shaab, in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
Two Hezbollah fighters were killed in confrontations on Tuesday, the militant group said. It is unclear whether they are part of the death toll reported by the Red Cross.
