[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Saif]

On your face, in your throat it'll go

I don't live in India. You and your wife do

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 28 in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Sunday Israeli strikes killed at least 28 Palestinians, as the director of one of two hospitals still operating in the territory’s north reported bombardment nearby.

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Israeli strikes kill 28 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 23 December, 2024, 00:12

A youth searches for survivors at the site of an Israeli strike that targeted the Abu Samra family home in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, amid the on-going war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. | AFP photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Sunday Israeli strikes killed at least 28 Palestinians, as the director of one of two hospitals still operating in the territory’s north reported bombardment nearby.

More than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war, there was no let-up in the violence in the Gaza Strip even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was ‘closer than ever’.

Israel has faced growing criticism of its actions during the war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, including from rights groups accusing it of ‘acts of genocide’ which the Israeli government strongly denies.

Pope Francis denounced on Sunday the ‘cruelty’ of Israel’s bombardment, highlighting the deaths of children and attacks on schools and hospitals in Gaza for the second time in as many days, while Israel accused the pontiff of ‘double standards’.

On the ground in Gaza, civil agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family.

An AFP photographer saw residents searching through the debris for survivors, while others looked for belongings they could salvage.

In a nearby compound, bodies covered in blankets were laid on the ground.

‘We are losing loved ones every day,’ said Deir el-Balah resident Naim al-Ramlawi.

‘I pray to God that a truce will be reached soon’ and would allow Gazans to finally ‘live a decent life, instead of this miserable life’, he said.

There was no comment from the Israeli military, which has confirmed a separate strike further north, on a school in Gaza City.

Bassal said that eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.

The Israeli military said it had carried out a ‘precise strike’ overnight targeting a Hamas ‘command and control centre’ inside the school compound in the city’s east.

AFP impages showed the damaged school building where mangled concrete slabs and iron beams lay strewn amid patches of blood.

Bassal said in a statement that an overnight strike killed three people in Rafah, in the south.

And a drone strike early on Sunday hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, the spokesman added.

Meanwhile a hospital director in northern Gaza said Israeli forces were bombing buildings near the facility.

Hossam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, said in a statement that the facility’s generators were hit and that ‘the army is attempting to target the fuel tank, which is full of fuel and poses a significant fire risk.’

Contacted by AFP, the military said it was unaware of any strikes on the hospital, one of only two still operating in northern Gaza.

The unprecedented Hamas attack last year that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 96 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 45,259 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Hamas and two other Palestinian armed groups said in a rare joint statement on Saturday that an agreement to end the bloodshed was ‘closer than ever’, after Qatari-hosted talks that followed months of stalled negotiations.

The groups, which include Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that a truce in Gaza and hostage release deal may be within reach, provided Israel does not impose new conditions in negotiations.

Negotiations have faced multiple challenges since a one-week truce in November 2023, with the primary point of contention being the establishment of a lasting ceasefire. Another unresolved issue is the territory’s post-war governance.

In the Vatican City, Pope Francis renewed on Sunday his condemnation of Israel’s attacks, a day after decrying their ‘cruelty’.

‘With pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals,’ the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman hit back at Francis’s initial comments on Saturday, saying they were ‘particularly disappointing’ and showed ‘double standards’, singling out Israel for criticism.​

 

[Saif]

Only 12 trucks delivered food, water since Oct

Just 12 trucks distributed food and water in northern Gaza in two-and-a-half months, aid group Oxfam said on Sunday, raising the alarm over the worsening humanitarian situation in the besieged territory.

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Only 12 trucks delivered food, water since Oct
Says aid group as the Palestinian enclave faces worsening humanitarian situation

Just 12 trucks distributed food and water in northern Gaza in two-and-a-half months, aid group Oxfam said on Sunday, raising the alarm over the worsening humanitarian situation in the besieged territory.

"Of the meager 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians," Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries through Saturday.

"For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours," Oxfam added.

Israel, which has tightly controlled aid entering the Hamas-ruled territory since the outbreak of the offensive, often blames what it says is the inability of relief organisations to handle and distribute large quantities of aid.

In a report focused on water, New York-based Human Rights Watch on Thursday detailed what it called deliberate efforts by Israeli authorities "of a systematic nature" to deprive Gazans of water, which had "likely caused thousands of deaths... and will likely continue to cause deaths."

They were the latest in a series of accusations levelled against Israel -- and denied by the country -- during its 14-month offensive.

Oxfam said that it and other international aid groups have been "continually prevented from delivering life-saving aid" in northern Gaza since October 6 this year, when Israel intensified its bombardment of the territory.

"Thousands of people are estimated to still be cut off, but with humanitarian access blocked it's impossible to know exact numbers," Oxfam said.

"At the beginning of December, humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water."

Oxfam highlighted one instance of an aid delivery in November being disrupted by Israeli authorities.

"A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians," it said.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza official says Israel strikes on hospital ‘terrifying’

An official from one of only two functioning hospitals in northern Gaza on Monday told AFP that Israeli forces were continuing to target his facility and urged the international community to intervene before ‘it is too late.’

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Gaza official says Israel strikes on hospital ‘terrifying’
Agence France-Presse . Israel 24 December, 2024, 00:30

People and rescuers inspect the carcass of a bus hit by an Israeli strike which led to casualties, in the Mawasi area west of Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday, amid the on-going war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. | AFP photo

An official from one of only two functioning hospitals in northern Gaza on Monday told AFP that Israeli forces were continuing to target his facility and urged the international community to intervene before ‘it is too late.’

Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in the city of Beit Lahia, described the situation at the medical facility as ‘extremely dangerous and terrifying’ owing to shelling by Israeli forces.

An Israeli military spokesman denied that the hospital was being targeted.

‘I am unaware of any strikes on Kamal Adwan hospital,’ he told AFP.

Safiyeh reported that the hospital, which is currently treating 91 patients, had been targeted on Monday by Israeli drones.

‘This morning, drones dropped bombs in the hospital’s courtyards and on its roof,’ said Safiyeh in a statement.

‘The shelling, which also destroyed nearby houses and buildings, did not stop throughout the night.’

The shelling and bombardment have caused extensive damage to the hospital, Safiyeh added.

‘Bullets hit the intensive care unit, the maternity ward, and the specialised surgery department causing fear among patients,’ he said, adding that a generator was also targeted.

‘The world must understand that our hospital is being targeted with the intent to kill and forcibly displace the people inside.

‘We face a constant threat every day. The shelling continues from all directions... The situation is extremely critical and requires urgent international intervention before it is too late,’ he said.

On Sunday, Safiyeh said he received orders to evacuate the hospital, but the military denied issuing such directives.

Located in Beit Lahia, the hospital is one of only two still operational in northern Gaza.

The area has been the focus of an intense air and ground campaign by Israeli forces since October 6, aimed at prevent Hamas from regrouping.

Most of the dead and injured from the offensive are brought to Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda hospitals.

The United Nations and other organisations have repeatedly decried the worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, particularly in the north, since the latest military offensive began.

Rights groups have consistently appealed for hospitals to be protected and for the urgent delivery of medical aid and fuel to keep the facilities running.

Israeli officials have accused Hamas militants of using the hospitals as command and control centres to plan attacks against the military.

The war in Gaza broke out on October 7 last year after Hamas militants launched an attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 45,259 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, figures the UN says are reliable.​