Nine killed in direct hit on UNRWA shelter in Gaza

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 25 January 2024

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KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA - Nine people were killed and 75 injured on Wednesday in a direct hit on a training centre turned shelter in southern Gaza run by UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinians, according to initial reports.

Teams from the agency and the World Health Organization (WHO) were trying to reach the Khan Younis Training Centre, said Tom White, Director of UNRWA Affairs in the Gaza Strip, in a post on the social media platform X.

Some 30,000 people are sheltering at the site and the death toll could be higher, said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner General, who also took to the platform to lament "another horrific day in Gaza".

"The compound is a clearly marked 'UN facility' and its coordinates were shared with Israeli authorities, as we do for all our facilities," he said, adding "once again a blatant disregard of basic rules of war".

Shock and resignation

The incident was indicative of the recent intense fighting around Khan Younis, said Jamie McGoldrick, interim UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, speaking during a press briefing from Jerusalem.

Mr. McGoldrick updated journalists on his visit to Gaza on Tuesday, where he said humanitarians are struggling to provide displaced people with basic services such as food, medical support, shelter, water and sanitation.

“As a result of that, the people themselves are really struggling to get through this, and the shock is actually starting to wane now, and people start to see…a resignation that this is what we're going to have to face for some significant time.”

While in Gaza, Mr. McGoldrick visited the southern city of Rafah, located on the border with Egypt, and a crossing point for aid into the enclave.

Rafah normally has a population of around 280,000, which has swelled to an estimated 1.2 to 1.4 million as people fleeing fighting elsewhere pack into the city, setting up makeshift shelters and tents in the streets.

The squalid and unsanitary conditions have led to outbreaks of respiratory infections and hepatitis A, both of which had been eradicated in Gaza. Meningitis and other illnesses are also emerging.

Shelter and safety

The conflict in Gaza has displaced over 75 per cent of the population, with nearly 1.7 million people now living in UNRWA and public emergency shelters as well as informal sites.

He said humanitarians are facing “massive issues” trying to provide shelter for displaced people seeking safety in the south. Some have moved from Rafah to the coastal town of Al-Mawasi, which is poorly supported or serviced by aid agencies, given the overwhelming numbers in need.

Currently, around 250 trucks come through the Rafah border “on a good day” when in the past, roughly 500 trucks from the private sector would bring in basic commodities daily.
Jamie McGoldrick, Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, briefs reporters virtually on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

More supplies needed

Mr. McGoldrick said the UN and partners are doing their best in the face of massive challenges, many of which are outside their control, and he emphasized the need for “minimum operating requirements” so they can work better.

“We need more supplies to come in from the private sector. We need to be able to scale up our pipelines and the key lifesaving commodities, but also from the authorities, the Israeli side, we need to get them to give us communications equipment,” he said.

Humanitarian workers are being sent into very hostile areas, “and they have no radios, they have no communications that work for them to be able to be seen to be safe,” he said, adding that they also do not have enough armoured vehicles.

Critical items ‘prohibited’

Furthermore, many of the goods humanitarians are trying to bring into Gaza to support water and sanitation “seem to be prohibited by the Israelis”, he said.

“They see them as something that could be used for other things such as pumps, such as generators, such as spare parts, pipes for water sanitation, solar panels and some medical equipment, which is key to our ability to address the humanitarian crisis that's there in front of us,” he said.

Some of the medical materials include basic drugs for treating chronic illnesses such as insulin pens for children.

Humanitarians are also facing difficulties with bringing in enough shelter material, including tarpaulins, blankets and non-food items.

Fuel for hospitals

Mr. McGoldrick said more fuel also needs to get to the north to supply generators inside hospitals there, such as Al-Shifa, “because they're working in some cases without anaesthetic, without electricity, to serve patients who are also ill and been wounded”.

He added that there is no real medical or casualty evacuation system in place to transport badly wounded people out of Gaza.

“We're not able to get people out farther afield to the neighbouring countries in order to get this very sophisticated surgery, and that's something we've been trying to work with the Israelis on,” he said.

Israel loses 24 soldiers in worst single-day loss

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 23 January 2024

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By Bassam Masoud, Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Emily Rose

GAZA/JERUSALEM - Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in Israel's worst day of losses in Gaza, the military said on Tuesday while also claiming to have encircled southern Gaza's main city and killed dozens of Palestinian fighters in a major ground assault of the new year.
Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said 21 soldiers were killed when two buildings they had mined for demolition exploded after militants fired at a nearby tank. Earlier, three soldiers were reported killed in a separate attack in southern Gaza.

"Yesterday we experienced one of our most difficult days since the war erupted," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. "In the name of our heroes, for the sake of our lives, we will not stop fighting until absolute victory."
The deaths came as the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) attacked the western part of Khan Younis, the main city in the south of the enclave which is sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have fled areas to the north. Israel says the city is now the principal base of Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza.

"Over the past day, IDF troops carried out an extensive operation during which they encircled Khan Younis and deepened the operation in the area. The area is a significant stronghold of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade," the military said.

Gazans say the advancing Israeli forces have since Monday blockaded and stormed hospitals in the crowded city, leaving the wounded and dead beyond the reach of rescuers.

Bodies were being buried in the grounds of Khan Younis's main Nasser hospital because it was unsafe to leave to reach the cemetery. Another Khan Younis hospital, Al-Khair, was stormed by Israeli troops who arrested staff there, and a third, Al-Amal, run by the Palestinian Red Crescent, was unreachable, according to Palestinian officials.

The Red Crescent said a tank shell had hit its headquarters on the hospital's fourth floor, and Israeli forces were firing from drones on anyone who moved nearby, making it impossible to dispatch ambulances for the entire Khan Younis area.
Israel says Hamas fighters operate in and around hospitals, making them legitimate targets. Hospital staff and Hamas deny this.

'GRAVEYARD FOR THE OCCUPATION'

As news of the Israeli losses spread through Gaza, Palestinians celebrated what they viewed as a victory.

"The resistance said it is going to make Gaza a graveyard for the occupation, and this is what is happening,” said Abu Khaled, sheltering in a school in Deir al-Balah, one of the few areas yet to be stormed by Israeli forces, between Khan Younis and the central zone where the Israeli troops were killed.

"The more they stay, the more we will suffer for sure, but the more they will suffer too."
Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction and sent fighters through Israel's border fence on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and abducting around 250 hostages, of whom about half remain in Gaza.
At least 25,295 Gazans have since been confirmed killed, according to Palestinian authorities, with thousands more dead feared lost in the rubble of a coastal strip largely laid to waste.

Nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have lost their homes, the vast majority now penned into small towns just north and south of Khan Younis, many sleeping rough in makeshift tents, with food and medicine running out and no clean water.
Israel itself is beginning to see the first stirrings of discontent with Netanyahu's war strategy - committed to the total annihilation of Hamas but with only vague discussion of what should come next for Gaza.

Since last week, Netanyahu has publicly vowed never to let Palestinians have an independent state, a break with Israel's main ally Washington, which has made a peace process ultimately leading to a Palestinian state the bedrock of its Middle East policy for decades.

Relatives of hostages still held in Gaza have called for more effort to bring them home, even if that means reining in the military campaign. A group of them burst into a parliamentary committee hearing on Monday.

Last week, a member of Netanyahu's war cabinet, former military chief-of-staff Gadi Eisenkot, whose own soldier son was killed in Gaza last month, said the campaign had yet to achieve its aim of dismantling Hamas and that there was no hope of freeing the hostages in a military operation. He called for elections to replace a government that he said had lost public confidence.

The conflict has been accompanied by an escalation in violence elsewhere in the Middle East, especially where armed groups allied to Israel's arch foe Iran operate, including Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

The Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which controls most of the populated parts of Yemen, has attacked shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is support for Gaza. The United States and Britain, which have been attacking the Houthis this month, carried out another round of air strikes overnight.

Israel bombs Khan Younis neighbourhoods

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 22 January 2024

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KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA STRIP - The southern Gaza city of Khan Younis has been mostly damaged or under destruction due to ongoing Israeli air strikes.

A latest video by an Israeli soldier on the ground show how they are directly conducting targets towards residential buildings.

Amid Israel's war on Gaza, troops have continually filmed themselves ridiculing Palestinians, as the video depicted a soldier who boldly showed how the army dismantled 40 residential buildings at once.

Itamar Bello posted the video on Facebook, showing various angles of the explosion that destroyed the buildings- as well as a proud photo of himself alongside several mines used for the demolition.