Gaza (Palestine): The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says its relief operations across the Gaza Strip will need to be sharply curtailed amid crippling Israeli airstrikes.
Hospitals in Gaza are doing their best to provide treatment to the wounded with diminishing resources. The war, in its 19th day, is the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides. The Hamas-run Health Ministry said Wednesday that at least 6,546 Palestinians have been killed and 17,439 others wounded. In the occupied West Bank, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed and 1,650 wounded in violence and Israeli raids since Oct. 7.
The Associated Press couldn't independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies figures from hospital directors. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, according to Israeli officials, mostly civilians who died in the initial Hamas rampage. Israel's military on Wednesday raised the number of remaining hostages in Gaza to 222 people, including foreigners believed captured by Hamas during the incursion. Four hostages have been released.
U.S. and other officials fear the fighting could spill over into a wider regional conflict.
Here’s what’s happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
- France to send navy ship to bring aid to Gaza
French President Emmanuel Macron said France is going to send a Navy ship to bring aid to hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The ship will leave the French military port of Toulon, in the Mediterranean Sea, within 48 hours, he said. He didn’t provide further details.
In addition, a French plane will arrive in Egypt on Thursday to deliver medical equipment via a convoy to Gaza. “Others will follow,” Macron said, adding that France wants to provide Gaza's civilian population access to medicine and medical care. Macron’s visit to Egypt Wednesday comes as part of a two-day tour to the Middle East that started with a visit to Israel meant to show France’s support and solidarity following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. The trip included a stop in Ramallah, in the West Bank, to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and another stop Wednesday morning in Jordan to have talks with King Abdullah II. Macron in Egypt said, “There’s no double standard … international law applies to everyone.” “All victims deserve our compassion, our commitment toward a fair and sustainable peace in the Middle East,” he added.
- UN Chief condemns Hamas attacks again, says he's shocked by misinterpretation of his remarks
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says he is “shocked” at the misinterpretation of part of his statement to the Security Council “as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas.” “This is false. It was the opposite,” he told reporters Wednesday. Israeli officials vehemently protested Guterres’ comment that the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel “did not happen in a vacuum,” calling it justification for terrorism. Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan has called for the secretary-general’s resignation.
Guterres reiterated the start of his statement on Tuesday: “I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel. Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians — or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.” The U.N. chief said he spoke of the grievances of the Palestinian people and also stated: “But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.”
- UN warns it will curtail its operations in Gaza
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, has warned that it would severely curtail its operations in Gaza Strip on Wednesday night because of a lack of fuel. UNRWA spokesperson Lily Esposito said that all services that the agency provides to 600,000 people who are sheltering in its facilities would be impacted, including food and water distribution. “Without fuel our trucks cannot go around to further places in the strip for distribution,” she told The Associated Press. “We will have to make decisions on what activities we keep or not with little fuel.”
- UN official calls on Israel to end Gaza siege
A senior U.N. official in the Palestinian territories has called for Israel to end its siege on Gaza and to allow humanitarian aid including badly needed fuel into the territory of 2.3 million people. Dominic Allen, representative of the U.N.’s Population Fund, told The Associated Press that delivering water, food, medical supplies and fuel is “the big, big priority.”
“The siege has got to end, and humanitarian aid has to get through so that we can meet the immediate lifesaving short-term needs,” he said, emphasizing that “no fuel means no hospitals, no desalination, no baking.” Allen also expressed concerns about Gaza’s 50,000 pregnant women, with an average of 150 births every day and the health care system “on the brink of collapse.” “They can’t access basic maternal health services, and they’re facing this double nightmare,” he said.
- Sapin praises UN Secretary-General's role
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, gave his full support to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for his role in the Gaza conflict.
Sánchez told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday that “I want to express the complete support of the Spanish government and I believe most of Spanish society for our general-secretary of the United Nations, António Guterres, who I believe is giving voice to what the majority of the world wants, which is a humanitarian pause, in favour of humanitarian aid and for the end of this human disaster.” Sánchez meanwhile repeated his condemnation of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, which he called the “clear origin” of the conflict.
- Hezbollah leader meets senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials
The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group held talks on Wednesday with senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures in a key meeting of three top anti-Israel militant groups amid the war raging in Gaza. A brief statement following the meeting said that Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah agreed with Hamas’ Saleh al-Arouri and Islamic Jihad’s leader Ziad al-Nakhleh on the next steps that the three — along with other Iran-backed militant groups — should take at this “sensitive stage.”
Their goal, according to the statement that was carried on Hezbollah-run and Lebanese state media, was to achieve “a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine” and halt Israel’s “treacherous and brutal aggression against our oppressed and steadfast people in Gaza and the West Bank."
- Hamas says 11 killed and dozens wounded in Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza
The Hamas-run Health Ministry said that 11 bodies were pulled from what remains of a house in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, after it was flattened by an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday. Dozens more were injured. The Associated Press can't independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies figures from hospital directors.
- Explosion rocks area near destroyed Gaza bakery
Residents picking through the remains of a bakery destroyed in the Moghrabi refugee camp in Deir al-Balah were startled as another deadly explosion rocked the area Wednesday. Men ran through rubble-strewn streets carrying people wounded in the blast that killed at least one, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
The initial Israeli airstrike on the bakery and neighbouring houses killed at least 10 people, the media office of Gaza's Hamas-run government said. It was the only bakery in the area and had just received flour from the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, the government said.
- Destruction and death toll rise in southern Gaza
After another night of bombing runs by Israel, rescuers and residents returned Wednesday to search the ruins of about 15 destroyed homes in Khan Younis, where survivors and dead bodies had been pulled from the wreckage a day earlier. A backhoe peeled away layers of broken concrete tangled with rebar where a home once stood as a group of men watched. A Civil Defense worker in an orange vest waded into the jumble of rubble and lifted a dead baby from the ruins. He wrapped the infant in a blanket. A teddy bear lay in the rubble nearby.
- UK PM supports pause in fighting to allow aid into Gaza
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says he supports a pause in fighting to allow aid into Gaza, though he rejected calls for a full cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. Sunak said that Israel has the right to respond militarily to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack as long as it follows international law. He told lawmakers in the House of Commons that the United Kingdom is working to get aid into besieged Gaza, including a Royal Air Force plane carrying 21 tons of aid that is flying to Cyprus on Wednesday bound for the region.
- Syrian state media reports Israeli airstrike on Aleppo Airport
Syrian state media said that an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday struck the international airport in the northern city of Aleppo, damaging its runway and putting it out of service amid the Israel-Hamas war. The attack would be the fourth time that Israel has targeted the airport in the war-torn country’s second-largest city since the onset of the war on Oct. 7. SANA, citing an unnamed military official, said the airstrikes were launched from the west over the Mediterranean Sea near the coastal city of Lattakia. The report didn't mention any casualties. The Israeli military didn't immediately comment.
- Jordan King calls for international community to pressure Israel to end Gaza strikes
King Abdullah II of Jordan called for the international community to pressure Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza and end its siege of the territory of 2.3 million Palestinians. In a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday in Amman, the monarch said that “stopping the war on Gaza is an absolute necessity, and the world must move immediately in this direction,” according to the Jordanian royal court. He warned that the Israel-Hamas war “may lead to an explosion of the situation in the region." King Abdullah II reiterated his country’s rejection of any attempts to displace Palestinians in Gaza.
- Egypt cautions its forces against any direct involvement in war
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi cautioned his forces against any direct involvement in the Israel-Hamas war. “My message to the army and people is not to make your military power make you rush into wrong decisions,” el-Sissi said in front of dozens of tanks in the port city of Suez. The president went on, saying that the Egyptian army has a history dealing with crises “rationally and with patience.”
- Qatar says hostage talks with Hamas still ongoing
Qatar’s foreign minister says that hostage negotiations with Hamas over the more than 200 people it took hostage during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel continue. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as Qatar’s prime minister, made the comments during a news conference with his Turkish counterpart in Doha on Wednesday.
“Regarding the progress on the hostage negotiation, it’s still ongoing,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “If we compare where we started and where we are right now, there is some progress and some breakthrough and we will remain hopeful.” He added: “The negotiations are still ongoing and at any moment of time, I think that if we will be able to get along between the two parties, I think we will see some breakthroughs hopefully soon.”
Tzahi Hanegbi, the head of Israel’s National Security Council, tweeted Wednesday that he is “pleased to say that Qatar is becoming an essential party and stakeholder in the facilitation of humanitarian solutions.”
- Turkey's President calls Hamas a 'liberation group'
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the militant Hamas group isn't a "terror" organization, but a “liberation group” trying to protect its lands and citizens. In an address to his ruling party’s legislators on Wednesday, Erdogan also said he has cancelled plans to visit Israel as part of his country’s policy of normalizing its relations with the Jewish state, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “misused our goodwill.”
Increasing his tone against Israel, Erdogan also described Israel’s action in Gaza as one of the “bloodiest, most disgusting and most savage attacks in history.” “We have no problem with the Israeli state, but we never have, and never will, accept the atrocities committed by Israel and the fact that it acts as an organization rather than a state,” he said. (With AP inputs)
Also read: A tent camp for displaced Palestinians pops up in southern Gaza, reawakening old traumas
