The UN warned Monday that its humanitarian operations would “cease within 48 hours”, due to lack of fuel, in the Gaza Strip, where hospitals in the north of the territory, trapped in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, are now “out of control”. service” according to the Palestinian Islamist movement.
What there is to know
- The EU condemned Hamas for what they described as the use of hospitals and civilians as human shields;
- Hamas claims that all hospitals in the northern coastal territory were now out of service due to lack of fuel;
- Seven premature babies and 27 intensive care patients died due to lack of electricity at al-Chifa hospital;
- US launched strikes in Syria against two Iran-linked sites on Sunday;
- Benjamin Netanyahu raised the possibility of a potential agreement to free hostages held in the Gaza Strip;
- At least 11,180 people, mainly civilians including 4,609 children and 3,100 women, have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.
- Laura-Julie Perreault’s column: “The nuclear ministers”.
Sick people and babies have already died, Hamas said, due to the lack of electricity at al-Chifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, which also houses thousands of civilians seeking to flee the war triggered on October 7 by the bloody attack launched by the Islamist movement on Israeli soil.
The situation in this hospital is “serious and dangerous”, according to the head of the World Health Organization (WHO).
SATELLITE IMAGE FROM MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
View of al-Chifa hospital and its surroundings
For several weeks, the UN has been asking for fuel to be transported to the Palestinian territory besieged and bombed by Israel, deprived of electricity, in particular to operate generators in hospitals.
But Israel refuses to let the fuel enter Gaza, saying it could benefit the military operations of Hamas, which rules the territory.
“Humanitarian operations will cease within 48 hours, with no fuel allowed to enter Gaza,” the director for Gaza of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Thomas White, said on Monday on X.
Death of “seven premature babies”
Israel claims that Hamas has installed its infrastructure in a network of tunnels under the al-Chifa hospital, transformed into a war zone while doctors and humanitarian organizations are alarmed by the fate of thousands of civilians and patients.
According to a journalist collaborating with AFP, “Israeli tanks, armored vehicles and personnel carriers surround the surroundings” of al-Chifa hospital, a huge complex located in the heart of Gaza City, while drones fly over the site at low altitude.
The Hamas government’s deputy health minister, Youssef Abou Rich, told AFP on Monday that “seven premature babies” and “27 patients in intensive care” had died since Saturday due to the lack of electricity in this area. hospital.
PHOTO DR. MARAWAN ABU SAADA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Newborns are placed in a makeshift bed after being removed from incubators at Gaza’s al-Chifa hospital following a power outage.
“All the hospitals” in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the most violent fighting is taking place, are now “out of service,” added Mr. Abou Rich.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicated that 20 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were no longer functioning in recent days.
While international aid is slowly arriving from Egypt, in very insufficient quantity according to the UN, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh asked the UN and the European Union on Monday to “drop aid” on Gaza.
A Turkish humanitarian ship carrying field hospitals for the Gaza Strip for the first time has arrived at the Egyptian port of Al-Arish, near the Rafah border crossing.
PHOTO MAHMUD HAMS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
An injured Palestinian child and other members of the Baraka family arrive at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis following Israeli airstrikes that hit their residence in the southern Gaza Strip on November 13.
“Intense fighting”
Israel has been relentlessly striking the Gaza Strip since the attack launched on its soil against civilians by Hamas commandos on October 7, and has been carrying out a parallel ground operation since October 27 with the aim of “wiping out” the Islamist movement. , classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
On the Israeli side, around 1,200 people have been killed since the start of the war, according to the authorities, the vast majority of them civilians killed on the day of the attack, of a scale and violence never seen since the creation of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli army announced on Monday that 44 soldiers had been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. She estimates that some 240 people were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip during the October 7 attack.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the American channel NBC about the possibility of an agreement to release some of the hostages, a condition according to him for any cease-fire.
PHOTO DENIS BALIBOUSE, REUTERS
The United Nations flag flies at half-mast at the European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 13.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombings have killed 11,180 people since October 7, mostly civilians, including 4,609 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
On Monday, flags were flown at half-mast on United Nations buildings around the world, in memory of UN personnel killed since the start of the war.
The fighting is concentrated in the heart of Gaza City, in the north of the territory, particularly around several hospitals suspected by the Israeli army of housing strategic infrastructures of Hamas, which according to it uses the population as “shields”. humans.”
Israel announced that an evacuation “corridor” would remain in place on Monday to allow civilians to leave al-Chifa hospital, while admitting that the area was in the grip of “intense fighting”.
On Monday, the army announced that it “continued to carry out raids, targeting terrorist infrastructures installed in government buildings, in the heart of the civilian population, including in schools, universities, mosques”.
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
Relatives mourn the death of family members at a hospital in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on November 13.
Smoke emerged from the Martyrs Mosque in the center of Gaza City, while alarms sounded in the deserted streets, according to images shot by AFP.
Images released Monday by the Israeli army show columns of soldiers advancing through fields of dusty ruins, supported by tanks and bulldozers, or opening fire from ambush in a destroyed building.
In Bureij, in the center of the Gaza Strip, families from the north continued to flee, fewer in number than in previous days: men and women on foot or crowded on carts, children placed on hospital beds pushed by a man.
“The bombings are everywhere. “We have had no food or water for maybe two weeks,” Mohammed Shamanna, a Palestinian carrying his child in his arms, told AFP.
“The destruction is everywhere”, “even the birds have lost their lives”, testified another man, Adel Shamallakh.
“Death Scenes”
“The world cannot remain silent when hospitals, which should be havens of peace, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, despair. Ceasefire now,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Doctors have posted images online showing them operating with candles or lighting themselves with mobile phones, due to a lack of electricity in hospitals.
On Monday, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Janez Lenarcic called on Israel to implement “real” humanitarian pauses. “The fuel must come in,” he insisted.
The Palestinian territory, of which around 1.6 of the 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war according to the UN, has been subject to a total siege imposed by Israel since October 9, which deprives the population of water, electricity, food and medicine.
Nearly 200,000 Palestinians, according to the Israeli army, had fled in three days, as of Saturday, the north of the territory via “corridors” opened daily, to take refuge in the south where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are crowded together in disastrous humanitarian conditions.
Around 980 trucks loaded with international aid have arrived in the Gaza Strip since October 21, including 76 on Sunday, according to OCHA.