At least 7 dead, dozens wounded after Israeli attacks on Gaza city
Palestinians, including children, have been forced to flee after Israeli forces carried out deadly air strikes in an area declared free of Hamas. Warning: Graphic
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Palestinians have fled eastern Gaza city under heavy bombardment as the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for the area it had previously declared clear of Hamas militants.
The flare-up in the northern Gaza Strip’s Shujaiya district, which witnesses and medics said caused numerous casualties, comes as fears grow of a wider regional conflagration involving Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, on a visit to Washington to discuss the Gaza war and ways to avoid broader conflict in the Middle East, warned Hezbollah that fighting on a massive scale would send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age”.
With cross-border tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah rising, Gallant said: “We do not want war, but we are preparing for every scenario.”
In Gaza, fighting has continued despite comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the “intense phase” of the war - now nearing its 10th month - was winding down.
Israeli strikes overnight and early Thursday have killed at least five people in Gaza City and another in Beit Lahia, also in the north.
In Gaza City, a witness in Shujaiya who declined to be named told AFP the situation was “very difficult and frightening” as Israeli military vehicles approached the area amid air strikes and shelling.
“Residents are running through the streets in terror... a number of wounded and martyrs lie in the streets,” the resident said.
The military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, told residents and displaced Gazans in the Shujaiya area to leave “for your safety”, in a message posted on social media.
They were asked to head south, to a declared “humanitarian zone” about 25 kilometres away.
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‘MARTYRS OF CHILDREN’
Rescuers are still digging through the rubble for survivors after Israeli forces attacked the Shujayea neighbourhood in northern Gaza City with dozens reported wounded and several killed, including four childrenGaza’s civil defence agency says its teams are unable to reach some of the victims because of ongoing Israeli fire. Residents said they were taken by surprise by tanks rolling in and shooting at midday with drones also attacking.
Doctor Muhammad Ghurab said the al-Ahli Hospital received seven “martyrs including four children” and more than 40 others who were wounded as the Israeli forces advanced in.
Shujaiya resident Omar Sukar said the violence began as Palestinians were collecting drinking water, which has been in limited supply due to an Israeli siege.
“People were filling water in the Shabura area in Shujaiya,” he told AFP. “The water truck had just arrived when the shelling began.”
UNICEF STRIKES DEAL TO BOOST GAZA WATER SUPPLY
The United Nations children’s fund says that Israel had agreed to restore power to a key desalination plant in southern Gaza, which could provide much-needed water to a million displaced people.
“UNICEF confirms an agreement (with Israel) was reached to re-establish the medium voltage feeder power line for the Southern Gaza Desalination Plant,” the agency’s spokesman in the Palestinian territories, Jonathan Crickx, said.
Water has become scarce for the Palestinian territory’s 2.4 million residents since war broke out nearly nine months ago.
More than two thirds of Gaza’s sanitation and water facilities have been destroyed or damaged, according to data cited by UN agencies, and only an intermittent supply of bottled water has been allowed in since Israel imposed a punishing siege on the territory.
The plant in Khan Yunis, once resupplied with electricity, should produce enough water to “meet what humanitarian standards define as a minimum intake of 15 litres per day of drinking water per person, for nearly a million displaced people” in southern Gaza, Crickx said.
“This is an important milestone, and we are very much looking forward to seeing it implemented.”
The plant should be able to produce or 15 million litres, of water per day at full capacity, according to UNICEF.
21 GAZA CANCER PATIENTS ENTER EGYPT
Twenty-one cancer patients crossed from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip into Egypt through the Kerem Shalom crossing, a medical source in Egypt’s El-Arish city said.
“They will be transported to the United Arab Emirates for treatment,” the source, who requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media, told AFP
.It is the first evacuation from Gaza since the Rafah border crossing was closed in early May, when Israeli forces took over the Palestinian side of the terminal.
Negotiations to re-open the Rafah crossing, a key conduit for aid and evacuations, have repeatedly floundered.Cairo has refused to resume operations through the crossing as long as Israeli forces remain in control of the Palestinian side.
According to Mohammad Zakut, a senior official in Gaza’s health ministry, nearly 5000 patients has been evacuated since the war began, but 25,000 more “still require treatment abroad”.
Among them are 10,200 cancer cases, including nearly a thousand children - 250 of whom “need to leave Gaza immediately”.
Since the closure, aid has slowed to a trickle.Some trucks have been diverted to the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, but humanitarian sources say the daily average of trucks entering the Palestinian territory have been less than 90 a day.The United Nations says a daily minimum of 500 trucks are needed to meet Gazans’ basic needs.
The UN has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the humanitarian crisis in famine-stricken and bombarded Gaza, where the few remaining hospitals are struggling to function as food and other essentials become increasingly difficult to obtain.
As a result of fuel shortages, the Palestine Red Crescent Society announced it has been forced to halt over a third of its ambulance fleet.
CANADA SANCTIONS TARGET ISRAELI SETTLERS
Canada has announced a new round of sanctions against Israeli settlers for “extremist violence” against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.
This comes just one month after the first ever sanctions by Canada against settlers were rolled out in lockstep with Britain, France, the European Union and the United States.
This round Ottawa listed seven individuals and five organizations “for their role in facilitating, supporting or financially contributing to acts of violence by Israeli extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians and their property,” said a statement.
Ottawa said attacks by settlers have resulted in the deaths of Palestinians and damage to property and farmlands, as well as the forced displacement of Palestinian communities.
The sanctions include a ban on transactions with the settlers or their organisations and on their entry into Canada.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, home to three million Palestinians, since 1967 and around 490,000 Israeli settlers live there in communities considered illegal under international law.
At least 553 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out.
HEZBOLLAH FIRES ROCKETS AT ISRAELI BASE, FOUR FIGHTERS KILLED
Hezbollah says it has fired “dozens” of rockets at a military base in northern Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Lebanon, announcing four of its fighters had been killed.
Fears of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah have risen in recent weeks as threats have intensified between the sides, which have traded regular cross-border fire since October 7.
Hezbollah said that “in response to the enemy attacks that targeted the city of Nabatiyeh and village of Sohmor”, its fighters bombed “the main air and missile defence base of the (Israeli) northern area command... with dozens of Katyusha rockets”.
It said in separate statements that four of its fighters, one from eastern Lebanon’s Sohmor, had been killed, and claimed two other attacks on Israeli troops and positions, including one with drones.The Israeli military said in a statement that “approximately 35 launches were identified crossing from Lebanon”.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported Israeli attacks in several areas of south Lebanon on Thursday, and said a strike a day earlier in Nabatiyeh wounded “more than 20” people when a two-storey building was targeted.
France’s foreign ministry said they were “extremely concerned” about the fighting, calling “all sides to exercise the greatest restraint”.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to Washington on Wednesday that his country did not want war in Lebanon, but could send it back to the “Stone Age” if diplomacy failed
‘BEYOND ANYTHING SEEN’: US MEDICS RECOUNT HORROR
Patients in Gaza’s few standing hospitals are dying in droves from infections resulting from a lack of protective gear and soap, even when they survive their horrific blast injuries.
And health workers are facing agonizing decisions, like giving up on a seven-year-old boy with extensive burns because bandages are in short supply and he’d have probably died anyway.
These are just some of the horrors witnessed by American doctors and nurses returning from the besieged Palestinian territory, who are now on a mission to spread the word about what they saw and apply pressure on Israel to allow in more life-saving supplies.
“The level of civilian casualties that I experienced was beyond anything I’d seen before,” Former US Army combat surgeon Adam Hamawy told AFP.
“Most of our patients were children under the age of 14,” the 54-year-old medic, who has volunteered in warzones and natural disaster-hit countries for the past 30 years.
“You could give all you want, you can donate. But if these borders [in Gaza] don’t open up to allow that aid to get in, then it’s just useless.”
‘POTENTIALLY APOCALYPTIC’: STARK WARNING IF GAZA WAR SPREADS
The United Nations humanitarian chief has warned that a spread of the war to Lebanon would be “potentially apocalyptic”, as fighting raged in the southern Gaza Strip.
Martin Griffiths described Lebanon as “the flashpoint beyond all flashpoints”, especially its southern border with Israel which has seen daily cross-border violence since October 7.
“It’s beyond planning. It’s potentially apocalyptic,” warned Griffiths, whose term as UN humanitarian coordinator ends this week.
A war involving Lebanon “will draw in Syria... it will draw in others” he said in Geneva, “it’s very alarming.”
Germany echoed a Canadian warning from the day before, urging their citizens in Lebanon to leave the country.
“German nationals are urgently requested to leave Lebanon,” updated foreign ministry advice in Berlin said.
“The current heightened tensions in the border area with Israel could escalate further at any time.”
On Tuesday, Ottawa advised Canadians to leave Lebanon “while they can”.
THOUSANDS OF MISSING CHILDREN UNDER THE RUBBLE
The bodies of thousands of missing children remain buried under the rubble in Gaza, the UN Security Council has been told.
UNICEF’s deputy executive director Ted Chaiban made the grim remarks while speaking at a special UNSC meeting on the UN chief’s recent report on violations against children in armed conflict.
“In 2023, 4,312 Palestinian and 70 Israeli children were verified as killed or maimed, representing 37 percent of all verified cases of killing and maiming included in the report,” Chaiban said.
But the number of children who remain buried under the rubble, and a lack of access for humanitarian actors, means that the UN was unable to include thousands more reported cases from Gaza in the report, he added.
MEDICS PREVENTED FROM HELPING MAN SHOT, KILLED BY IDF
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that medics were prevented from reaching a man who was shot and killed by Israeli forces earlier this month.
OCHA said the body of the 39-year-old Palestinian man had also been “withheld by Israeli forces”, referring to the practice of Israel’s military keeping the bodies of Palestinians they have killed in what relatives say is an “act of psychological cruelty”.
Between June 18 and June 24, four Palestinians were shot and killed, including one child, and some 60 others in the occupied West Bank, OCHA said in their latest update.
A total of 536 Palestinians, including 130 children, have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem between October 7 and Monday of this week.
Settlement expansion continues to shrink the grazing space available for herding communities.
— OCHA oPt (Palestine) (@ochaopt) June 26, 2024
Israeli settlers injured eight Palestinians.@OHCHR condemns the tying of an injured #Palestinian to the hood of a military jeep.
Full report: https://t.co/bPBoxHGVmQpic.twitter.com/o6ThqxO8eq
US TO MAINTAIN PAUSE ON HEAVY BOMBS SHIPMENT TO ISRAEL
Senior White House officials have told Israel’s defence minister that Washington will maintain a pause on a shipment of heavy bombs that has been held up since May.
The US and Israel remain in discussions about the shipment of 2000-pound and 500-pound bombs, which were paused over concerns about their use on civilians in Rafah, southern Gaza, an unnamed official told Reuters.
The shipment remains the only one the US has withheld from Israel, with the senior US official saying other weapons will continue to flow.
The official’s comments come as US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Yoav Gallant met in Washington, DC, this week.
Following the meeting, Gallant said there had been significant progress on US munitions supplies to Israel, saying “obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed”.
‘INTENSE PHASE’ WINDING DOWN: NETANYAHU
A day after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the “intense phase” of the Gaza war is winding down, the army bombed targets in the Palestinian territory on Monday and Hamas again demanded a permanent end to fighting.
Mr Netanyahu spoke in a TV interview as Defence Minister Yoav Gallant travelled to Washington for what Gallant called “critical” talks with Israel’s top ally and arms supplier.
He stressed this “doesn’t mean that the war is about to end, but the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah,” the far-southern city near Egypt that is the last part of Gaza to face a full ground invasion.
“The goal is to return the kidnapped and uproot the Hamas regime in Gaza,” the PM said, again rejecting the permanent ceasefire demanded by Hamas during on-and-off talks involving United States and other mediators.
NETANYAHU WALKS BACK US CEASEFIRE COMMENTS
Mr Netanyahu also walked back from his comments where he appeared to dismiss the latest Israeli ceasefire proposal backed by the United States.
His latest comments come the day after he said in an interview with a local Israeli media that he was ready to make “a partial deal” with Hamas to return some hostages still being held captive in Gaza, but reiterating his position that the war will still continue after a ceasefire “to achieve the goal of eliminating” Hamas.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments were at odds with the aims of a broader ceasefire proposal outlined by US President Joe Biden last month. That plan, which the US has said is an Israeli one, sets out conditions intended to lead to the eventual release of all remaining hostages, in return for a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli forces.
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Originally published as At least 7 dead, dozens wounded after Israeli attacks on Gaza city
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