Gaza/ Tel Aviv:The besieged Gaza was pummeled by air strikes on the 12th day as well in the ongoing war between Israel and Palestine that has left nearly 5,000 people dead on either side.
Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday evening killing at least 500 people including patients and doctors, according to Gaza Health Ministry. The Israeli military has denied involvement and blamed a misfired rocket from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group. However, that organization also rejected responsibility. US President Joe Biden arrived in Israel amid the carnage in Gaza and said the airstrike on the Gaza hospital "appeared to not have been caused by Israel".
As per the latest updates from the beleaguered region, almost 3,450 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack inside Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people. Another 1,200 people across Gaza are believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead. More than 10,000 people are injured in Gaza and the West Bank.
The World Food Program has warned that Gaza’s population is at “the risk of starvation” if 310 tons of food aid languishing at the Gaza-Egypt Rafah crossing are not urgently let through.
Currently:
1. Doctors in Gaza City performed surgery on floors, often without anesthesia, in a desperate bid to save badly wounded victims of a massive blast that killed civilians sheltering in a hospital. Video that The Associated Press confirmed was from the hospital showed the grounds strewn with torn bodies, blankets and school backpacks.
2. Rage at the hospital carnage spread through the Middle East. Protesters hurled stones at Palestinian security forces in the occupied West Bank and at riot police in neighbouring Jordan, venting fury at their own leaders for failing to protect Palestinians. The leaders of Egypt and Jordan and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called off a planned summit with Biden,
3. The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to vote on a resolution about the fighting between Hamas and Israel, but negotiations on the wording were still underway.
4. Israel says at least 199 people taken during the Hamas attack are being held captive in Gaza. They range from babies to the elderly. Most are civilians. Some of their families received frantic phone calls or texts during the attack. Others heard nothing and later saw video evidence their loved ones were taken.
Here's what's happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he supports a two-state solution so that Israel and the Palestinian people can both live safely and securely in dignity and in peace as he announced USD 100 million for humanitarian aid in the war-torn Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel says it will allow Egypt to deliver limited quantities of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was approved Wednesday in light of a request from visiting President Joe Biden. In a statement, it said it “will not thwart” deliveries of food, water and medicine, as long as the supplies do not reach Hamas. The statement made no mention of badly needed fuel.
It was not clear when the aid would start flowing. Egypt’s Rafah crossing has only a limited capacity, and Egypt says it has been damaged by Israeli airstrikes. Israel, which controls most crossings into Gaza, says it will not allow deliveries from its territory. It also demanded that international Red Cross be allowed to visit kidnapped Israelis held captive in Gaza.
- US vetoes UN resolution condemning Hamas' attacks on Israel and all violence against civilians
The United States vetoed a U.N. resolution Wednesday that would have condemned Hamas’ attacks against Israel and all violence against civilians and urged humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 votes in favour, the United States against and two abstentions.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote that President Joe Biden is in the region engaging in diplomacy “and we need that diplomacy to play out.” She also criticized the resolution for not saying anything about Israel’s right to self-defense. Before the vote on the resolution sponsored by Brazil, council members rejected two Russian amendments, one calling for a “humanitarian cease-fire” and the other condemning indiscriminate attacks on civilians and “civilian objects” in Gaza, which include hospitals and schools.
- US sanctions 10 Hamas members and its financial network
The United States on Wednesday sanctioned a group of 10 Hamas members and the Palestinian militant organization's financial network across Gaza, Sudan, Turkey, Algeria and Qatar in response to the surprise attack on Israel that left more than 1,000 people dead or kidnapped.
Targeted for sanctions by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control are members who manage a Hamas investment portfolio, a Qatar-based financial facilitator with close ties to the Iranian regime, a Hamas commander and a Gaza-based virtual currency exchange. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the U.S. “is taking swift and decisive action to target Hamas’s financiers and facilitators following its brutal and unconscionable massacre of Israeli civilians, including children.”
- Palestinian diplomat accuses Israel of intentionally bombing Gaza hospital
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki accused Israel of “intentionally” bombing a hospital in Gaza and said the strip's residents are being subjected to genocide. Malki, who spoke in Saudi Arabia during a Wednesday meeting of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, alleged the Israeli military had attacked the same hospital two days earlier and warned doctors there.
He added that he thinks the international community is allowing Israel to kill under the “slogan of self-defense.” Malki asserted that Israeli bombing has killed 1,300 children in the Gaza Strip in past 11 days. Israel's military retaliated after Hamas militants broke through a border fence and killed more than 1,400 people in the country, according to Israeli authorities.
- Red Cross says it has 60 tonnes of aid ready
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it has mobilized a convoy carrying 60 tons of aid, including medical supplies, for deployment into Gaza, but it needs safe access to deliver them. “The recent violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory is at a level that the ICRC has not witnessed in many years,” the Geneva-based humanitarian organization said in a statement Wednesday.
- Egypt declares national mourning for victims of Gaza hospital blast
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi declared three days of national mourning for those killed in the blast at al-Ahli Hospital and other Palestinians killed in the ongoing Hamas-Israel war. In a statement on social media, El-Sissi blamed Israel for a deadly blast at a Gaza City hospital. The Hamas-led Health Ministry in Gaza says the blast killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, many of whom were sheltering from Israeli airstrikes at the hospital.
- Gaza hospital director's urgent appeal
The director of al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza made an urgent and emotional appeal for an end to the latest Hamas-Israel war after a devastating blast there Tuesday night. Speaking to The Associated Press by phone, Suhaila Tarazi said the grisly scenes she encountered in the aftermath of the explosion were “unlike anything I have ever seen or could ever imagine.” She was not at the hospital at the time of the Tuesday night blast but described body parts of children strewn everywhere in the hospital and the courtyard. “Our hospital is a place of love and reconciliation,” Tarazi said. “We are all losers in this war. And it must end.”
Tarazi declined to comment directly on the death toll reported by the Hamas-run Health Ministry of at least 500 victims. “It could be more, it could be less. There are so many body parts that no one can really tell.”
- Hamas praises cancellation of Biden summit
A spokesperson for Hamas in Lebanon praised the decision to cancel a summit in Jordan between Arab governments and U.S. President Joe Biden following a deadly hospital blast in Gaza. Biden was supposed to meet with Jordanian, Egyptian, and Palestinian leaders on Wednesday in Amman in hopes of resolving the ongoing Gaza-Israel war.
Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan called for an immediate cease-fire, a humanitarian corridor into the blockaded Gaza Strip and the continuation of mass regional protests that took place after Tuesday night's blast at the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. He also called for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Israel to “rise up against the Zionist enemy and clash with it in all cities, villages, and camps."
- Israeli airstrike destroys a bakery at Gaza refugee camp
Fierce Israeli airstrikes hit houses in Gaza City and the southern border town of Rafah. Near the port, survivors said an Israeli airstrike hit a three-story building belonging to the Haboush family, killing 40 people and wounding 25. In the central Gaza Strip, an airstrike hit a bakery at the Nuseirat refugee camp and ignited a massive fire that killed four bakers, witnesses told a journalist for the AP. Dozens of other bakeries across Gaza were forced to shut down due to a lack of water and electricity.
- Iran foreign minister calls for oil embargo against Israel
Iran’s top diplomat is calling on Muslim nations to expel their Israeli ambassadors and launch an oil embargo on Israel after an explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip. The comments Wednesday by Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian mark the first time an oil embargo has been discussed as Israel wages war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip after its unprecedented Oct. 7 attack.
“We expect the Islamic countries that have diplomatic relations with the Zionist regime to cut off their relations immediately and expel the Israeli ambassador from their country,” Amirabdollahian said in a clip aired by state television in Iran. “Secondly, the export of oil to the country of Israel and any project that exists between any Islamic state and Israel must be stopped immediately.”
- Egypt rejects calls to move Palestinians to Sinai Peninsula
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi says his country rejects what he calls efforts to force Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, warning that such an effort would jeopardize his country’s peace with Israel. Speaking at a joint press conference in Cairo with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, el-Sissi said Wednesday that his government views Israel’s siege on Gaza as a scheme to expel the Palestinians to Egypt.
“We are rejecting the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and the explosion of Palestinians to Sinai,” the Egyptian leader said, adding that Sinai would be turned into a launching ground for “terrorist attacks” against Israel, which would in turn blame Egypt for such attacks. He proposed that Israel move the Palestinians to Negev in Israel until it ends “its announced mission” of destroying Palestinian militant groups. (With AP inputs)
