Israeli officials have warned the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC), the organization claimed on Sunday.
The Gaza Strip’s Al-Quds Hospital must be evacuated promptly. Raids have been going on since this morning, the organization said in a Facebook post, and they’re only 50 meters away from the hospital.
Over 8,000 Palestinians, including at least 3,595 children, have been killed and hundreds more injured in the restricted Gaza Strip as a result of the ongoing bombing by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), prompting this declaration.
Israel has responded to the October 7 Hamas surprise raid, which killed over 1,400 people, by launching indiscriminate and persistent bombings, launching an invasion on the ground, and cutting down communications and the internet throughout the Palestinian area.
Over a million people have been forced to leave their homes in Gaza, and panic has spread throughout the territory since Israel severed communications cables several days ago. By early Sunday, however, reports indicated that internet service was slowly being restored.
Israel’s embargo on Gaza has resulted in severe food, water, and medicine shortages for the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants. Since the Rafah crossing point reopened over the weekend, only a handful of assistance trucks have made it into Gaza.
On Saturday, the ICRC warned that Gaza’s “still functioning hospitals are on the verge of collapse” due to a lack of fuel for generators and medications.
“The immediate imperative must be to save lives and preserve humanity, including by ensuring hospitals can operate safely,” said the ICRC in a press release.
The organization claimed that the medical personnel it sent to Gaza on Friday were insufficient to deal with the “tragedy unfolding” there.
“It is unacceptable that civilians have no safe place to go in Gaza amid the massive bombardments, and with a military siege in place, there is also no adequate humanitarian response currently possible,” stated the president of the ICRC. “This is a catastrophic failing that the world must not tolerate.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reaffirmed its commitment to ongoing conversation with relevant parties “to find solutions to the most pressing humanitarian issues, such as protecting civilians and helping the wounded.”
Earlier, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the Israeli bombing had rendered 12 hospitals and 32 health care centers inoperable.
Put an end to this bloody nightmare.
On Sunday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern about the deteriorating situation in Gaza, calling for an immediate ceasefire to end the “nightmare” of murder.
Every hour, the situation in Gaza becomes increasingly critical. At a press conference in Kathmandu, Guterres stated, “I regret that Israel has intensified its military operations rather than a critically needed humanitarian pause, supported by the international community.”
“The number of civilians who have been killed and injured is totally unacceptable.”
The Israeli army has been conducting ground incursions into Gaza since late Friday, calling this “stage two” of the conflict after weeks of intensive bombardment that the Palestinian health ministry says has claimed the lives of over 8,000 people.
“The world is witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe taking place before our eyes,” said Guterres.
More than two million people with nowhere to flee are being bombed relentlessly without access to food, water, shelter, or medical treatment. I implore all individuals in positions of authority to take a step back.
The top UN diplomat is in Nepal for four days of discussions after arriving from Qatar.
For the second time, he called for an immediate humanitarian truce, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the delivery of sustained humanitarian support on a scale that matches the needs of the people of Gaza.
“We must join forces to end this nightmare for the people of Gaza, Israel, and all those affected around the world, including here in Nepal.”
Ten Nepalese students were killed and one is still missing after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.
The United Nations Mission in Lebanon reported on Saturday that a peacekeeper had suffered injuries as a result of shelling in southern Lebanon, hours after reporting a hit at its offices.
Nepalese peacekeepers were “moderately injured in the stomach and arm after two Israeli shells” hit near the border village of Hula, according to the official National News Agency (NNA) of Lebanon.
The UNIFIL headquarters are in Naqura, and earlier on Saturday, Andrea Tenenti, a spokesperson for the force, told AFP that “a shell hit inside the base,” adding that there were “no injuries but some damage.”
At least 58 individuals have been murdered in Lebanon as a result of the border clashes, with the vast majority being members of Hezbollah but also including four civilians and Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah. On the Israeli side, at least four individuals have been killed, including a civilian.
According to the International Organization for Migration, almost 29,000 people in Lebanon have been forced to leave their homes because of the disturbance.
But UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk has warned that if Israel launches a large-scale offensive, thousands more civilians could be killed.
“Given the manner in which military operations have been conducted until now, I am raising alarm about the possibly catastrophic consequences of large-scale ground operations in Gaza and the potential for thousands more civilians to die,” warned the president.
“There is no safe place in Gaza, and there is no way out.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey blamed “the main culprit” for the violence in the West. At a big pro-Palestinian gathering in Istanbul, he blamed the West for the slaughter in Gaza, which he said was attracting hundreds of thousands of supporters.
As a result of his remarks, Israel announced it was bringing home all of its diplomats from Turkey.
War and siege for three weeks
UNRWA stated on Sunday that thousands of Gazans stormed into its warehouses and distribution centers and stole bread and other “basic survival items.”
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) issued a statement saying, “This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza.”
Deir al-Balah is home to one of UNRWA’s warehouses, where aid convoys from Egypt are stored before entering Gaza.
Since Israel began bombing the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza on October 7, aid deliveries have been severely hampered.
“Market supplies are dwindling as trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt make their way into the Gaza Strip.”
is insufficient,” UNRWA stated, adding that the present mechanism to allow relief convoys into Gaza was “geared to fail.”
“The needs of the communities are immense, if only for basic survival, while the aid we receive is meager and inconsistent.”
More than 50 UNRWA employees have been murdered, and the transit of supplies has been severely hampered as a result of air strikes, according to UNRWA. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, the organization had already warned that a shortage of resources threatened its ability to carry out its mission.
UNRWA is a public service organization that was founded in 1949, after the first Arab-Israeli war, to provide basic necessities to the Palestinian people.
treatment and assistance for the needy in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Run to the south. Israelis inform the Palestinians
“Since early Friday evening, combined combat forces of armor, combat engineers, and infantry have been operating on the ground in the northern Gaza Strip,” according to the Israeli army.
Leaflets dropped by fighter jets encouraged inhabitants of Gaza City to “immediately” move south, warning that the area had become a “battlefield” and that “shelters in northern Gaza and Gaza (City) are not safe.”
If Israel released all Palestinian prisoners, Hamas’s military wing stated it would release the hostages. “The price to pay for the large number of enemy hostages in our hands is to empty the (Israeli) prisons of all Palestinian prisoners,” the statement stated.
We are prepared for the enemy to wipe this entire detainee file clean at once. We can accommodate a gradual approach if that’s what it prefers.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to meet with representatives of the hostages’ families as he faced growing anger about the condition of the captives as Israel escalated its bombardment of Gaza.
He promised the families that officials would “exhaust every option to bring (the captives) home,” but he did not commit to an actual swap.
The Israeli military has been urging civilians in Gaza to evacuate to the south for the past two weeks, and spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement that the military was raising the intensity of its demands.
It is there that “they can receive water, food, and medicine,” he said, promising that “the humanitarian efforts in Gaza, led by Egypt and the United States, will be expanding” on Sunday.
The Internet is back online.
Palestinian telecoms company Jawwal and international network monitor Netblocks both reported improvements in access to the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning.
Israel severed all lines of connection with Gaza late on Friday, alarming the Palestinian Red Crescent, which reported that emergency calls were not being received.
Human Rights Watch had previously warned that the power outage may be used as “cover for mass atrocities.”
An AFP employee in Gaza City, responding to rumors that connectivity was being gradually restored, stated early on Sunday that he could access the internet and telephone network and had made phone calls to people in southern Gaza.
When the internet went down in Gaza, entrepreneur Elon Musk promised that his Starlink satellite service would keep “internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza” connected.
Starlink is a system of low-Earth-orbiting satellites designed to restore internet access in areas where it has been disrupted, such as in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Since the Russian invasion, the network has become a vital asset for the Ukrainian military.
