Israeli officials have reportedly warned the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) to evacuate the al-Quds hospital in the Gaza Strip, the PRC reported on Sunday. “Since this morning, there have been raids 50 meters away from the hospital,” it said in a Facebook post.
Over 8,000 Palestinians, including at least 3,595 children, have been killed in the ongoing Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shelling of the small Gaza Strip, and hundreds more have been injured.
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that ground operations in Gaza are being expanded and that Israeli fighter jets have attacked hundreds more Hamas targets in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the second phase of a conflict that has now lasted three weeks.
Over 450 Hamas military targets in the Gaza Strip were hit by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) fighter jets, including operational command centers, observation positions, and anti-tank missile launch posts, according to the Israeli military.
“We are gradually expanding the ground activity and the scope of our forces in the Gaza Strip,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a briefing. “We will do everything we can from the air, sea and land to ensure the safety of our forces and achieve the goals of the war.”
Over a million people have been forced to leave their homes in Gaza, and panic has spread throughout the territory since Israel severed communications cables several days ago. By early Sunday, however, reports indicated that internet service was slowly being restored.
Israel’s embargo of Gaza has resulted in severe food, water, and medicine shortages for the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants. Since the Rafah crossing point reopened over the weekend, only a handful of assistance trucks have made it into Gaza.
In a statement released on Saturday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that Gaza’s “still functioning hospitals are on the verge of collapse” due to a scarcity of fuel for generators and medication.
“The immediate imperative must be to save lives and preserve humanity, including by ensuring hospitals can operate in safety,” said the ICRC in a press release.
Its medical team, which arrived in Gaza on Friday, has been called insufficient to deal with the “tragedy unfolding” there.
“It is unacceptable that civilians have no safe place to go in Gaza amid the massive bombardments, and with a military siege in place there is also no adequate humanitarian response currently possible,” stated president of the ICRC. “This is a catastrophic failing that the world must not tolerate.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reaffirmed that it is in constant communication with the appropriate parties “to find solutions to the most pressing humanitarian issues, such as protecting civilians and helping the wounded.”
Earlier, the Palestinian Ministry of Health had said that Israeli bombing had rendered 12 hospitals and 32 health care centers inoperable.
Put an end to this bloody nightmare
On Sunday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed grave concern over the deteriorating situation in Gaza and renewed his frantic calls for an immediate ceasefire to end the “nightmare” of bloodshed.
Every hour, the situation in Gaza becomes increasingly critical. During his time in Kathmandu, Guterres expressed sorrow that Israel had not taken a humanitarian pause, as was called for by the international community.
“The number of civilians who have been killed and injured is totally unacceptable.”
The Israeli military declared late last week that “stage two” of the war had begun with ground incursions into Gaza. This came after weeks of intensive shelling, which the Palestinian health ministry said had claimed the lives of almost 8,000 people.
“The world is witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe taking place before our eyes,” said Guterres.
More than two million people with nowhere to flee are being bombed relentlessly without access to food, water, shelter, or medical treatment. I implore all individuals in positions of authority to take a step back.
After holding discussions in Qatar, the UN’s top diplomat has arrived in Nepal for a four-day visit.
The delivery of continuous humanitarian support at a scale that matches the needs of the people of Gaza was also called for, and he reiterated his call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
“We must join forces to end this nightmare for the people of Gaza, Israel and all those affected around the world, including here in Nepal.”
Ten Nepalese students were killed and one is still missing after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.
Hours after reporting a hit at its offices, the United Nations Mission in Lebanon reported Saturday that a peacekeeper had been hurt by shelling in southern Lebanon.
An official Nepalese peacekeeper was “moderately injured in the stomach and arm after two Israeli shells” hit the area near the border village Hula, according to the official National News Agency (NNA) of Lebanon.
Earlier on Saturday, Andrea Tenenti, a spokesperson for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFI), told AFP that “a shell hit inside the base” in Naqura, where UNIFIL headquarters are located, adding that there were “no injuries but some damage.”
At least 58 individuals have been murdered in Lebanon as a result of the border clashes, with the vast majority being members of Hezbollah but also included four civilians and Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah. At least four Israelis, including a civilian, have been slain.
According to the International Organization for Migration, almost 29,000 people in Lebanon have been forced to leave their homes because of the disturbance.
But UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk has warned that if Israel launches a big ground offensive, thousands more civilians could be killed.
“Given the manner in which military operations have been conducted until now… I am raising alarm about the possibly catastrophic consequences of large-scale ground operations in Gaza and the potential for thousands more civilians to die,” warned the president.
“There is no safe place in Gaza and there is no way out.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, blamed “the main culprit” for the violence on the West. The West is “the main culprit” in the massacre in Gaza, he told hundreds of thousands of supporters of the Palestinian cause during a rally in Istanbul.
Israel responded to his remarks by saying it would bring home all of its diplomats stationed in Turkey.
War and siege for three weeks
UNRWA reported on Sunday that thousands of Gazans had broken into its warehouses and distribution centers, stealing bread and other “basic survival items.”
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) issued a statement saying, “This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza.”
UNRWA uses one of the warehouses in Deir al-Balah to store aid goods sent into Gaza by humanitarian convoys from Egypt.
Since Israel began bombing the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza on October 7, aid deliveries have been severely hampered.
UNRWA has warned that the present mechanism for getting humanitarian convoys into Gaza is “geared to fail,” with “supplies on the market running out” and “insufficient” aid arriving via trucks from Egypt.
“The needs of the communities are immense, if only for basic survival, while the aid we receive is meagre and inconsistent.”
More than 50 UNRWA employees have been murdered and the transit of supplies has been severely hampered as a result of air strikes, according to UNRWA. The organization had already warned that a shortage of funds was making it difficult to carry out its mission before the crisis escalated.
UNRWA was founded in 1949, right after the first Arab-Israeli war, and it currently operates in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, providing public services such as schools, primary healthcare, and humanitarian aid.
During a phone discussion on Sunday, Sunak’s office reported that French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak discussed the difficulty of delivering aid to the Gaza Strip.
The leaders emphasized the need to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza immediately. A representative for Sunak claimed that the two sides had agreed to collaborate on efforts to evacuate foreign nationals and distribute life-sustaining supplies such food, gasoline, water, and medicine.
“They expressed their shared concern at the risk of escalation in the wider region, in particular in the West Bank.”
The two leaders agreed that the best path to peace was the long-delayed two-state option, which envisions separate nations for Israelis and Palestinians.
The south should be evacuated. Palestinians, Israel informs
“Since early Friday evening, combined combat forces of armour, combat engineers and infantry have been operating on the ground in the northern Gaza Strip,” according to the Israeli army.
Leaflets dropped by fighter jets encouraged inhabitants of Gaza City to “immediately” move south, warning that the area had become a “battlefield” and that “shelters in northern Gaza and Gaza (City) are not safe.”
The military branch of Hamas has stated that it is willing to release the hostages if Israel releases all Palestinian prisoners. “The price to pay for the large number of enemy hostages in our hands is to empty the (Israeli) prisons of all Palestinian prisoners,” the statement stated.
We are prepared if the enemy decides to release all of the prisoners at once. We can accommodate a gradual approach if that’s what it prefers.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to meet with representatives of hostages’ families as he faced growing anger about the condition of the captives as Israel escalated its bombardment on Gaza.
On Saturday, Netanyahu cautioned Israelis to brace for a “long and hard” campaign, but he stopped short of labeling the ongoing operations in Gaza an invasion. US officials claim that some of Vice President Joe Biden’s advisors have urged their Israeli colleagues to delay a quick all-out assault.
He promised the families that officials would “exhaust every option to bring (the captives) home,” but he did not commit to an actual swap.
The Israeli military has been urging civilians in Gaza to evacuate to the south for the past two weeks, and spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement that the military was raising the intensity of its demands.
They may get water, food, and medicine there, he said, promising that “humanitarian efforts to Gaza, led by Egypt and the United States, will be expanding” on Sunday.
The Internet is back online.
Palestinian telecoms company Jawwal and international network monitor Netblocks both reported improvements in access to the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning.
The Palestinian Red Crescent expressed concern that emergency calls were not being received after Israel knocked off all communications and phone networks across Gaza late Friday.
According to Human Rights Watch, the power outage posed a “cover for mass atrocities” risk.
A member of the AFP staff in Gaza City, responding to rumors that connectivity was being gradually restored, claimed early on Sunday that he could access the internet and telephone network and had made phone calls to persons in southern Gaza.
Billionaire Elon Musk claimed his Starlink satellite service would provide internet connectivity for “internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza” during the blackout.
Starlink is a system of low-Earth-orbiting satellites designed to restore internet access in areas where it has been disrupted, such as in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Since the Russian invasion, Kyiv has relied heavily on the network as a vital tactical asset.
