“It can be said that in recent days everything has only gotten worse.” Léo Cans, head of mission at Médecins sans frontières (MSF), has just returned from the Gaza Strip. Questioned on franceinfo, Sunday January 28, he described on franceinfo a disastrous humanitarian situation, particularly in hospitals in the Palestinian territory. “THE“nursing staff are completely incapable of caring for patients properly”he commented, while violent fighting is still ongoing.
Violent fighting still ongoing
On the ground in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army described “intense fights” in Khan Younes, the large city in the south of the Palestinian territory now the epicenter of the war, specifying that he had killed “terrorists and seized large quantities of weapons”. In this city, considered by Israel to be a stronghold of Hamas, the clashes particularly took place around the Nasser and al-Amal hospitals. Around 350 patients and 5,000 displaced people were at Nasser hospital on Saturday, “running out of fuel, food and supplies”, according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, surgical operations are suspended at al-Amal hospital due to lack of oxygen.
More than 1.3 million displaced Gazans, according to the UN, are massed against the closed border with Egypt to flee the fighting.
American soldiers killed by a drone on the Jordanian-Syrian border
Three American soldiers were killed and 25 injured in a drone attack in Jordan, near the border with Syria, Washington announced, with President Joe Biden threatening reprisals against the perpetrators and naming pro-Iran groups responsible. It is the first time that American soldiers have been killed in the Middle East since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, raising fears of an even greater escalation of tensions in the region. Jordan later said the attack was carried out in Syria, not on its soil.
The UN refugee agency in turmoil
France has announced that it is not planning any new payments to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the first quarter of 2024, announced the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This decision follows information shared by Israel against employees, accused of having been involved in the bloody Hamas attack on the soil of the Jewish state on October 7. The ministry cites accusations of “exceptional gravity” and says he wants to wait “that the investigations launched in recent days shed light on past facts and be accompanied by concrete measures”. Several other Western countries have decided to suspend their funding to the agency.
Aid truck blocked by protesters
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the south of the Gaza Strip from Israel have had to turn around, after demonstrations in favor of the release of Israeli hostages. “About 200 demonstrators” gathered around the Kerem Shalom crossing point, according to Cogat, an organ of the Israeli Defense Ministry which coordinates the army’s civilian activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. “Humanitarianism for humanitarianism”, chanted the demonstrators, who want aid not to reach Gaza until the hostages are freed. Some demonstrators have relatives still held hostage.