Gaza crisis: Babies being born ‘into hell’ amid desperate aid shortages

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 21 January 2024

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NEW YORK - Babies are being “delivered into hell” in Gaza with many others likely dying as a result of conflict with Israel and increasingly dire conditions in the enclave, UN humanitarians warned on Friday.

Reiterating urgent international calls for a ceasefire, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that there have been nearly 20,000 births since the start of widespread Israeli bombardment in response to Hamas-led attacks in Israel that left some 1,200 dead and approximately 250 taken hostage.

Chronic aid access problems have meant that Caesarean sections have been performed without anaesthetic while other women have been unable to deliver their stillborn babies because medical staff are overwhelmed, the UN agency said.

“Mothers face unimaginable challenges in accessing adequate medical care, nutrition and protection before, during and after giving birth,” said UNICEF Communications Specialist Tess Ingram.

“Becoming a mother should be a time for celebration. In Gaza, it's another child delivered into hell.”

Hepatitis shock

Echoing deep concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation, UN World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed alarm that hepatitis A infections had been confirmed in Gaza.

“The inhumane living conditions – barely any clean water, clean toilets and possibility to keep the surroundings clean – will enable hepatitis A to spread further and highlight how explosively dangerous the environment is for the spread of disease,” Tedros tweeted on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.

The latest WHO data indicates that on average 500 people are sharing one toilet, and over 2,000 people have to use a single shower, increasing the risk of disease spread.

In addition to a sharp rise in upper respiratory infections, diarrhoea cases among children under age five recorded during the last three months of 2023 were 26 times higher than reports from the same period in 2022, the UN health agency noted.

“People are being pushed into ever smaller places; they’re in overcrowded shelters with lack of access to clean water, lack of access to toilets,” said WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic.

“A large chunk of the population in Gaza – people who are injured and bombarded – need immediate medical help," the WHO official said, noting that Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis had only two doctors remaining in its emergency department compared to 24 before the war, with only 14 intensive care beds today, down from 45 and only four nurses available out of 20 initially.

Some relief

To help the most vulnerable women and children in Gaza, UNICEF has ensured the delivery of milk formula and supplements for mothers too weak to breastfeed, along with medical supplies for overstretched medical teams, but much more is needed.

Speaking from Amman, Jordan, after returning from southern Gaza, Ms. Ingram explained that staff at the overwhelmed Emirati Hospital in Rafah were forced to discharge mothers “within three hours of a Caesarean”, a situation that is “beyond belief and requires immediate action”.

Some 105 days since the start of the war, she insisted that constant bombardment and displacement “directly impacts newborns, resulting in higher rates of undernutrition, developmental issues and other health complications”.

‘Inhumane’ conditions

Approximately 135,000 children under two years old are believed to be at risk of severe malnutrition today amid “inhumane” conditions characterized by makeshift shelters, poor nutrition and unsafe water, Ms. Ingram continued.

“Seeing newborn babies suffer while some mothers bleed to death should keep us all awake at night,” she said. “Knowing two very young Israeli children abducted on 7 October have still not been released should also keep us awake.”

Deadly toll nears 25,000

Echoing those concerns, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, expressed deep concern at reports that nearly 25,000 people have been reported killed, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. A full 70 per cent are believed to be women and children, and at least another 61,500 have been injured while “several thousands more are under the rubble, many presumed dead”.

In its latest update on the crisis, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, repeated deep concerns that safe and effective relief missions “anywhere in Gaza” remained “heavily compromised by Israeli restrictions on the import of critical equipment, including appropriate communication devices”.

Access denials by the Israeli military to areas north of Wadi Gaza “have also impeded efforts to a scale up the provision of lifesaving assistance there and adding significant cost to the overall response”, the UN office maintained.

Pressure-cooker environment

Briefing journalists in Geneva from Gaza, the head of the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ajith Sunghay, said that displaced people continue to arrive in Rafah “in the thousands”.

“I’ve seen men and children digging for bricks to be able to hold in place tents made with plastic bags," he said. "This is a massive human rights crisis and a major, human-made, humanitarian disaster. Gaza needs urgent scaling up of humanitarian aid, including of the protection response.”

The days-long telecommunications blackout has continued, Mr. Sunghay said, emphasizing that this “added to the confusion and fear” as it prevented Gazans from accessing services and information on where they should evacuate.

“It is a pressure cooker environment here, in the midst of utter chaos, given the terrible humanitarian situation, shortages and pervasive fear and anger,” the OHCHR official continued, describing how “heavy bombardment of Middle Gaza and Khan Younis” was “clearly visible and audible from Rafah, especially at night”.

After arriving in Gaza on Monday, Mr. Sunghay said that he could “hear bombing, sometimes several times an hour”. Night-time was “the most terrifying time” during strikes for Gazans and the more than 100 civilians still held hostage in the enclave, who are “unseen (and) who most certainly hear the same sounds and feel the same fear”, he said.

Palestinians accuse Israeli forces of executing 19 civilians in Gaza

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 21 January 2024

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Footage, witness accounts shared with Al Jazeera reveal how Israeli soldiers carried out executions in Gaza last month.

Israeli soldiers executed at least 19 civilians in Gaza City in December, said witnesses who recounted how women and girls were separated from their families, beaten and strip-searched.

Human rights groups have been gathering testimonies of the alleged summary executions and Al Jazeera has obtained footage and witness accounts from members of one family about the assault that took place on December 19.

“Tanks and bulldozers surrounded the building. Shells had been hitting the building for days. The situation was desperate,” said Umm Odai Salem, whose husband was among those killed.

The Israeli soldiers stormed the building. “They banged on our door. My husband … told them we are all civilians. They took him to another apartment. I followed them, pleading with them to let him go because we are civilians,” she said.

“They beat me and my daughters. They put us women in one place and threatened us with guns and knives. They made us strip. They searched us, insulting us using the most terrible words,” Salem added.

The soldiers disregarded their pleas and proceeded to “execute” all the men they rounded up outside.

“My husband was one of the 19 men killed in this building. They ordered them to bend down and executed them. They killed them all.”

‘She was dying’

The footage shows the bodies of men with the entry holes of bullets in their back.

After the men were killed, the apartment that Salem and her daughters were sheltering in was hit, one of her daughters told Al Jazeera, killing her three-year-old sister, Nada.

“I was holding my sister in my arms. Then the shelling resumed. Nada was hit. She made some soft sounds. She asked for some water.”

“I thought she was crying. But she was dying. Shrapnel had entered her head, eyes and neck. My sister tried to carry her body but she fell from her arms at the door.”

William Schabas, professor of international law at Middlesex University in London, says the footage, along with testimonies, would constitute evidence in the International Criminal Court.

“I should add that it’s not really important to demonstrate that they’re civilians. Summary executions even of fighters, even of combatants is a war crime,” he told Al Jazeera.

Schabas, who was a chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza war, added that beyond testimonies and footage of bodies, prosecutors would need to submit the identity of perpetrators to get this to court in the first place.

“That’s one of the great challenges in a situation like this, [which] is actually finding out who were the people who fired the weapons or gave the orders,” he said.

‘Systematic’ killings

Muhammad Shehada, of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor in Copenhagen, told Al Jazeera his organisation believes there is a pattern of a “systematic” killing taking place on the ground.

“In at least 13 of field executions, we corroborated that it was arbitrary on the part of the Israeli forces,” said Shehada, the group’s chief of programmes and communications.

The monitoring group’s members who visited crime scenes and gathered testimonies from witnesses and family members of those who were killed, as well as reports from the health ministry in Gaza, said the soldiers have a sense of impunity.

Israeli forces have previously been accused of executing civilians since the current conflict erupted on October 7.

In December, citing one instance, the United Nations human rights office called for an independent inquiry into allegations that Israeli soldiers executed at least 11 Palestinian men in Gaza in what it called “a possible war crime”.

The key issue is how such probes would be conducted, analysts say, since none of the entities that could investigate alleged Israeli crimes against Palestinians is currently allowed into the Gaza Strip.

Many Palestinians have also accused Israeli forces of mistreatment and torture after being held in Israeli prisons.

On Friday, Muhammad Abu Samra, a detainee released in Gaza, accused the Israeli army of “torture” and “beatings”.

“The army … threatened to shoot us while we were naked in the cold. Then female soldiers attacked us and we were subjected to obscene insults,” Abu Samra told Al Jazeera.

Another released prisoner, Abdel Qader Fatesh, said soldiers ordered him to take his clothes off, tied his hands and blindfolded him.

A UN human rights official said on Friday that detainees in the Gaza Strip were subjected to weeks of imprisonment in unknown locations and physical abuse.

For videos, visit: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse-israeli-forces-of-executing-19-civilians-in-gaza

Families of hostages in Gaza say they've lost faith in Netanyahu

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 20 January 2024

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TEL AVIV - Families of some of the captives who were taken by Hamas to Gaza on 7 October say that they have lost trust in a government which failed to secure their release.

According to Israeli media reports, family members said that they were looking into ways of rescuing those still held in Gaza, without specifying what those methods might be.

Anger has long been brewing over the Israeli government's failure to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas in their 7 October attack and held in Gaza ever since.

The families of about a dozen of the hostages protested outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's home in Caesarea on Friday night, imploring the premier to do more to secure their release.

Hamas killed about 1,100 people and took hundreds more hostage in their large-scale attack on Israel on 7 October.

Estimates for how many hostages were taken in the attack have fluctuated, but Netanyahu said earlier this week that the number stood at 253.

More than 100 of them were released as part of a hostage-prisoner exchange deal with Hamas, reached at the end of November and mediated by Qatar. More than 300 Palestinians held in Israeli detention were released as part of the agreement.

Netanyahu was re-elected prime minister of Israel at the end of 2022, and appointed far-right politicians as ministers.

The premier and his government have been unpopular with the Israeli public almost from the outset, with their plans to overhaul the judiciary system especially controversial and sparking months of weekly mass protests.

Hamas officials have said that the group will release all the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners once Israel ends the war.

Israel launched a brutal war on Gaza after the Hamas attack that has killed almost 25,000 people in the Palestinian territory and injured tens of thousands more.