Israel promised them, but they are “impossible” to be implemented, according to the United Nations. The secure areas, designated by the Jewish state for civilians in the Gaza Strip to take refuge and escape the fighting, “cannot be safe or humanitarian when declared unilaterally”, said the spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Tuesday, December 5. These areas “are not scientific, they are not rational, they are not possible”, added the manager. Follow our live stream.
France decrees a six-month freeze on the Hamas leader’s assets in Gaza. Considered the architect of the October 7 terrorist attacks against Israel, Yahya Sinouar is one of the main leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement wanted by Israel. The Ministry of the Economy has not yet specified the amount of these assets, frozen by a decree published in the Official Journal on Tuesday.
“An even more hellish scenario” is looming, warns the UN. “No one is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go” since the resumption of hostilities, alert Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian Territories, in a press release Monday, December 4 evening. She describes “shelters without space, a health system on its knees, a lack of clean and drinking water (…) a perfect recipe for epidemics and a public health disaster”.
The WHO accuses Israel of having requested the emptying of a medical aid warehouse in Gaza. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says he has a “notification (…) to remove supplies from our medical warehouse in the south of the Gaza Strip within 24 hours, as ground operations will render it unusable”. He asked in a publication on “to withdraw this order”. The Israeli Defense body overseeing civilian activities in the Palestinian Territories denied sending such a request in another post.
Hamas does not want female hostages to testify, US says. “It seems that one of the reasons why [les membres du Hamas] do not want to release the women they are holding hostage and this break has been shattered, it is because they do not want these women to talk about what happened to them during their detention”Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US State Department, told the press on Monday.