NAJIB JOBAIN, SAMYA KULLAB and RAVI NESSMAN
Updated Thu, October 19, 2023
UNDP provided tens set up for Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, are seen in Khan Younis on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Ashraf Amra)
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with airstrikes Thursday, including in the south where Palestinians were told to take refuge, as the Israeli defense minister ordered ground troops to prepare to see Gaza “from the inside”, though he didn’t indicate when the ground assault would begin.
Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals tried to stretch out ebbing medical supplies and fuel for generators, as authorities worked out logistics for a desperately needed aid delivery from Egypt. Doctors in darkened wards across Gaza performed surgeries by the light of mobile phones and used vinegar to treat infected wounds.
Amid the violence, President Joe Biden pledged unwavering support for Israel's security, “today and always,” while adding that the world “can’t ignore the humanity of innocent Palestinians" in the besieged Gaza Strip.
In an address Thursday night from the Oval office, hours after returning to Washington from an urgent visit to Israel, Biden drew a distinction between ordinary Palestinians and Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. He linked the current war in Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying Hamas and Russian President Vladimir Putin "both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.”
Biden said he was sending an “urgent budget request” to Congress on Friday, to cover emergency military aid to both Israel and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, an unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment delivered to Congress estimated casualties in an explosion at a Gaza City hospital this week on the “low end” of 100 to 300 deaths. The death toll “still reflects a staggering loss of life,” U.S. intelligence officials said in the report, seen by The Associated Press. It said intelligence officials were still assessing the evidence and their casualty estimate may evolve.
Biden and other U.S. officials already have said that U.S. intelligence officials believe the explosion at al-Ahli Hospital was not caused by an Israeli airstrike. Thursday’s findings echoed that.
The Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Gaza in retaliation for the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas rampage in southern Israel. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north of Gaza and flee south, strikes extended across the territory, heightening fears among the territory's 2.3 million people that nowhere was safe.
Palestinian militants fired rockets into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, and tensions flared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In a fiery speech to Israeli infantry soldiers on the Gaza border, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant urged the forces to “get organized, be ready” to move in. Israel has massed tens of thousands of troops along the border.
“Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside," he said. “It might take a week, a month, two months until we destroy them,” he added, referring to Hamas.
Israel’s consent for Egypt to let in food, water and medicine provided the first possible opening in its seal of the territory. Many Gaza residents are down to one meal a day and drinking dirty water.
Egypt and Israel were still negotiating the entry of fuel for hospitals. Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Hamas has stolen fuel from U.N. facilities and Israel wants assurances that won’t happen. The first trucks of aid were expected to go in Friday.
With the Egypt-Gaza border crossing in Rafah closed, the already dire conditions at Gaza’s second-largest hospital deteriorated further, said Dr. Mohammed Qandeel of Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis. Power was shut off in most of the hospital and medical staff were using mobile phones for light.
At least 80 wounded civilians and 12 dead flooded into the hospital after witnesses said a strike hit a residential building in Khan Younis. Doctors had no choice but to leave two to die because there were no ventilators, Qandeel said.
“We can’t save more lives if this keeps happening,” he said.
The Gaza Health Ministry pleaded with gas stations to give fuel to hospitals and a U.N. agency donated some of its last fuel.
The agency's donation to Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest, would “keep us going for another few hours,” hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said.
Al-Ahli Hospital was still recovering from Tuesday's explosion, which remains a point of dispute between Hamas and Israel. Hamas quickly said an Israeli airstrike hit the hospital, which Israel denied. The AP has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.
The blast left body parts strewn on the hospital grounds, where crowds of Palestinians had clustered in hopes of escaping Israeli airstrikes. The U.S. assessment noted “only light structural damage,” with no impact crater visible.
Near al-Ahli, meanwhile, another explosion struck a Greek Orthodox church housing displaced Palestinians late Thursday, resulting in deaths and dozens of wounded. Abu Selmia, the Shifa Hospital director general, said dozens were hurt at the Church of Saint Porphyrios but could not give a precise death toll because bodies were buried under rubble.
Palestinian authorities blamed the blast on an Israeli airstrike, a claim that could not be independently verified. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchy of Jerusalem condemned the attack and said it would “not abandon its religious and humanitarian duty” to provide assistance.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 3,785 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, the majority women, children and older adults. Nearly 12,500 were injured, and another 1,300 people were believed buried under rubble, authorities said.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians slain during Hamas’ deadly incursion. Roughly 200 others were abducted. The Israeli military said Thursday it had notified the families of 203 captives.
More than 1 million Palestinians, about half of Gaza’s population, have fled their homes in the north since Israel told them to evacuate, crowding into U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters or the homes of relatives.
For the first time since Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in 1967, a major tent camp arose to house displaced people. Dozens of U.N.-provided tents lined a dirt lot in Khan Younis.
The deal to get aid into Gaza through Rafah, the territory’s only connection to Egypt, remained fragile. Israel said the supplies could only go to civilians and that it would “thwart” any diversions by Hamas. Biden said the deliveries “will end” if Hamas takes any aid.
More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tons of aid were positioned at or near Rafah, according to Khalid Zayed, the head of the Red Crescent for North Sinai.
Under an arrangement reached between the United Nations, Israel and Egypt, U.N. observers will inspect the trucks before entering Gaza. The U.N., working with the Egyptian and Palestinian Red Crescent, will ensure aid goes only to civilians, an Egyptian official and European diplomat told the AP. A U.N. flag will be raised on both sides of the crossing as a sign of protection against airstrikes, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.
It was not immediately clear how much cargo the crossing could handle. Waleed Abu Omar, spokesperson for the Palestinian side, said work has not started to repair the road damaged by Israeli airstrikes.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told Al-Arabiya TV that foreigners and dual nationals would be allowed to leave Gaza once the crossing was opened.
Israel said it agreed to allow aid from Egypt because of a request by Biden — which followed days of intense talks with the U.S. secretary of state to overcome staunch Israeli refusal.
Israel had previously said it would let nothing into Gaza until Hamas freed the hostages taken from Israel. Relatives of some of the captives were furious over the aid announcement.
“The Israeli government pampers the murderers and kidnappers,” the Hostage and Missing Families Forum said.
The Israeli military said Thursday it killed a top Palestinian militant in Rafah and hit hundreds of targets across Gaza, including militant tunnel shafts, intelligence infrastructure and command centers. Palestinians have launched barrages of rockets at Israel since the fighting began.
Violence was also escalating in the West Bank, where Israel carried out a rare airstrike Thursday, targeting militants in the Nur Shams refugee camp.
Six Palestinians were killed, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, and the Israeli military said the strike killed militants and resulted in 10 Israeli officers being wounded. More than 74 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the war started.
___
Nessman reported from Jerusalem and Kullab from Baghdad. Associated Press journalists Amy Teibel and Isabel Debre in Jerusalem; Samy Magdy and Jack Jeffrey in Cairo; Matthew Lee and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington, and Ashraf Sweilam in el-Arish, Egypt, contributed to this report.
Yahya Abou-Ghazala
Tue, October 17, 2023
Editor’s Note: This story contains a graphic image.
When Palestinians in north Gaza heeded the warnings issued in the Israeli military’s phone calls, text messages, and fliers advising them to head south, they thought they were fleeing to potential safety.
The Israeli Defense Forces issued the guidance Friday, telling all civilians in north Gaza to evacuate to areas south of Wadi Gaza “for your own safety and the safety of your families” as the IDF continues “to operate significantly in Gaza City and make extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians.”
However, some Palestinians who followed the evacuation warnings and fled their homes in search of safety suffered the very fate they were running from: Israeli airstrikes killed them outside of the evacuation zone.
The killings underscore the reality that evacuation zones and warning alerts from the Israeli military haven’t guaranteed safety for civilians in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where Palestinians have no safe place to escape Israeli bombs.
In the early hours on Friday, Aaed Al-Ajrami and his nephew, Raji, received a phone call from an Israeli military official – warning him to get everyone he knows and head southwards immediately, the nephew told CNN. Despite following the instructions and successfully fleeing south of the evacuation zone, Aaed’s family was killed by an Israeli airstrike the next day.
An audio recording of the phone call obtained by CNN reveals the details of the brief conversation – which included the IDF’s instructions to flee south of the evacuation zone and no guidance on how to get there. Raji said once they realized who was calling, they recorded the conversation so they could share it with other family members.
“All of you go to the South. You and all your family members. Gather all of your stuff with you and head there,” the officer told them.
Aaed wanted to know what road would be safe to take and what time they should leave.
“It doesn’t matter which road,” the officer replied. “Do it as fast as you can. There is no time left.”
Aaed heeded the warning. By sunrise on Friday, he headed south with his family and relatives to stay with friends in Deir Al Balah, a city roughly eight miles south of Wadi Gaza and outside the evacuation zone.
The next day, an Israeli airstrike in the area destroyed parts of the building where Aaed’s family sought refuge – killing him and 12 other members of his family, including seven children.
His nephew Raji, 32, was staying in a different building nearby when he heard the explosion and feared the worst. He rushed to the scene after receiving a call telling him that his uncle’s family members were amongst the victims.
“The destruction was massive,” Raji said. “We started digging people out who were hit by the explosion, some of them were still alive … the gunpowder smell was very strong, the dust was everywhere.”
Bodies of the Ajrami family members killed by an Israeli airstrike - Courtesy Raji Al-Ajrami
“These people all thought that they were finally safe and that nothing would happen in the area,” Raji said. “You can follow the orders so that you aren’t exposed to danger, but the danger will still reach you wherever you are.”
In response to CNN’s query about the airstrikes in Deir Al Balah and other areas outside of the evacuation zone, an IDF statement said it’s “operating to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities.”
While an estimated 500,000 Palestinians have fled northern Gaza for the south since Friday, many others are unable to make the journey south of the evacuation zone and are stuck in northern Gaza.
Yara Alhayek, 22, told CNN that her family living in the north had nowhere to seek refuge if they headed south. “We couldn’t leave because there is no safe place to go to … it’s really dangerous if we leave our house, it’s really dangerous if we stay in our house, so we have no idea what to do.”
Israel has defended its ongoing hammering of Gaza with airstrikes as targeting Hamas headquarters and assets which are hidden within civilian buildings, claiming that what may appear as a civilian building is actually “a legitimate military target.”
Independent UN experts have condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate attacks against Palestinian civilians.” Doctors Without Borders released an update Sunday night saying the strikes have also hit hospitals and ambulances and decried that the “indiscriminate bombing campaign in which most casualties have been civilians.”
Israel’s military airstrikes have killed more than 2,800 and injured 11,000 since October 7, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said Monday, according to the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA.
Israeli troops and military equipment have massed at the border with Gaza as Israel prepares to ramp up its response to the deadly October 7 attack by the Islamist militant group Hamas. Warplanes continued to blast Gaza over the weekend, as civilians fled southward, following Israel’s evacuation instructions.
Several United Nations agencies have also warned that mass evacuation under such siege conditions will lead to disaster, and that the most vulnerable Gazans, including the elderly and pregnant, may not be able to relocate at all.
“The order to evacuate 1.1 million people from northern Gaza defies the rules of war and basic humanity,” wrote Martin Griffiths, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in a statement late Friday. “Roads and homes have been reduced to rubble. There is nowhere safe to go.”
Raji, who has taken in the wounded children that survived the attack, says he has to put on a strong face to support them despite being broken internally.
“I feel the injustice, these are innocent people, what did they do?”
WAFAA SHURAFA and SAMYA KULLAB
Tue, October 17, 2023
DEIR al-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Even the “safe zones” of Gaza aren't safe for Palestinians.
Intense Israeli strikes Tuesday destroyed homes, hit a U.N. school sheltering the displaced and killed dozens of people in south and central Gaza.
“The situation is very, very difficult with artillery shelling and aerial bombardment on homes and defenseless people,” said Abu Hashem Abu al-Hussein, who initially welcomed displaced families into his home in Khan Younis, but then fled to a U.N. school, where he hoped to find safety himself.
Israel had told Palestinians over the weekend to evacuate northern Gaza and Gaza City in advance of an expected ground invasion of the territory following an attack by Hamas militants last week that killed at least 1,400 Israelis.
An estimated 600,000 people complied, packing what belongings they could and rushing to the south, where they squeezed into overcrowded U.N. shelters, hospitals, and homes in the approximately 14-kilometer (8-mile) long area south of the evacuation zone.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas on Tuesday of preventing people from “getting out of harm’s way,” and he again urged Palestinians to head “south to safe zones”
For some on Tuesday, there was no safety to be had there.
After midnight Tuesday morning, an explosion shattered Moataz al-Zre’e’s windows. He rushed outside to find his neighbor Ibrahim’s entire home had been razed. The house next door was damaged also. At least 12 people from two families were killed, including three people from a family displaced from Gaza City.
“There was no (Israeli) warning,” he said. Al-Zre’e’s sister was gravely wounded and five of his paternal cousins were also injured following the attack. “Most of the killed were women and children.”
Stunned residents took stock of the damage from another strike in Khan Younis. Samiha Zoarab looked around at the destruction in shock, as children rummaged through piles of rubble around the destroyed home, which lies amid a dense cluster of buildings.
At least four people from the same family were killed in the attack, she said. “There are only two survivors,” she said.
A strike hit a U.N. school in central Gaza where 4,000 Palestinians had taken refuge, killing six people, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said.
A barrage leveled a block of homes in the central Gaza Bureij refugee camp, killing many inside, residents said. Among the killed was Ayman Nofal, a top Hamas military commander.
Strikes also hit the cities of Rafah, where 27 were reported killed, and Khan Younis, where 30 were reported killed, according to Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas hideouts, infrastructure and command centers.
The strikes came even as residents struggled with an Israeli blockade that cut off the flow of water, food, fuel and medicine to the area.
The Kuwait Speciality Hospital in the southern city of Rafah has received two orders from the Israeli military to evacuate said staff had just two hours to leave after Sunday's order, in a video posted to the hospital's Facebook group. The second came Monday at 10 p.m., as medics worked around the clock to resuscitate patients. “We shall not evacuate,” he said.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on why it had called for the hospital evacuation.
Apart from the near-constant stream of wounded patients, the hospital was also sheltering hundreds of people inside its halls and surroundings. Israel “has left no red line they did not cross, nor an international convention they did not violate,” said al-Hams. The safety of hospitals, he added, was the last red line left.
APTOPIX Israel Palestinians
Palestinians wounded in Israeli bombardment are brought to a hospital in Deir al-Balah, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
Hamas expresses willingness to release some captive women and children
Keir Simmons and Ken Dilanian and Richard Engel and Rich Schapiro and Natasha Lebedeva
Tue, October 17, 2023
After days of tense negotiations involving U.S., Israeli and Qatari officials, Hamas has expressed a willingness to release women and children it holds captive. But the group acknowledged that it does not have custody of all the hostages seized in the attack on Israel 10 days ago, a diplomat with knowledge of the talks and a former U.S. official briefed on the matter said.
Some of the hostages are held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another group based in Gaza, the officials said, and others are held by “random Gaza citizen opportunists,” the former U.S. official said. Hamas, which controls Gaza, is trying to gain custody of all of the captives but says it cannot amid continued bombing, the sources said.
The sources spoke shortly after a senior Hamas official told NBC News’ Richard Engel that the group is willing to immediately release all civilian hostages — foreign and Israeli — if Israel stops its airstrikes on Gaza.
The Hamas official said the hostages could be released within the hour as long as Israel meets its terms. He claimed that there is no safe place to release them now.
Gershon Baskin, an Israeli activist who helped secure the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, noted that it is essentially the same message the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry put out Monday. “I think this is a false message, psychological warfare. It means nothing,” Baskin told NBC News.
He said he sees it as unrealistic, because “there are no guarantees that Israel will give that it won’t renew the fighting, and Hamas knows that.” Baskin said he thinks the only way an agreement could be reached would be if Hamas released women, children, the elderly and the sick in exchange for Palestinian women and minors held in Israel.
The U.S. has sent a team of intelligence specialists to help locate the hostages, Biden administration officials have said, but the chances of a successful military rescue are seen as remote.
“We have 22 years of experience hunting people, and we’re really good at it,” said Christopher O’Leary, a former FBI official who retired this year after having run a multiagency U.S. government hostage recovery unit. But, he said, “there has not been a complex hostage situation like this in the modern era. It’s an active war zone filled with tunnels.”
Talks on the fate of the hostages have been ongoing “since day one,” said the diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. “In the early days, Hamas was pushing for an exchange of prisoners,” the diplomat said, “but they have finally accepted that wasn’t going to be the case.”
Hamas insists on keeping any member of the Israeli military captive, but it “appears to have understood that civilians will have to be released without a trade,” the diplomat added. “Discussions are ongoing and have been more positive recently, but no breakthrough yet.”
The former U.S. official said Hamas had not decided whether to release male civilians who are Israeli citizens and not dual passport holders.
Israel, which is preparing for a possible ground invasion of Gaza, steadfastly refuses to exchange prisoners for hostages, the sources said.
A third source, a senior Western diplomat, portrayed the talks as tenuous. "It’s clear there is a dialog between Hamas, Qatar and Israel, but ‘negotiations’ is probably an overstatement,” the diplomat said. “It’s a channel. Qatar has more leverage than anyone else but not as much as they’d like."
Underscoring the complexity of the situation, Hamas’ chief hostage negotiator, Osama Mazini, was killed in an Israeli airstrike this week, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. And hundreds of Palestinians were reported killed after an explosion at a Gaza hospital.
President Joe Biden will be the first world leader with citizens among the hostages to visit Israel on Wednesday. Others, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, are set to follow.
A British official confirmed Sunak has asked the emir of Qatar, Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, to help secure the hostages’ release.
Since the crisis began, “Qatari officials have been in touch with Hamas almost every day at varying levels,” said the diplomat with knowledge of the talks.
For many years, Qatar has played interlocutor with Hamas, allowing its political wing to set up an office in the capital, Doha. Under an agreement among Qatar, Israel and Hamas, millions of dollars in humanitarian aid are sent to Gaza.
But even the Qataris failed to predict the Hamas attack on Israel 10 days ago, a Western diplomat said.
“The Qataris have been pretty burnt by this whole thing,” the diplomat said. “They were invested in their role being able to talk to everyone and in Hamas becoming a more moderate organization.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment