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

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 37 in Gaza

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Friday that 37 people had been killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall war death toll to 45,436.

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Israeli strikes kill 37 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 28 December, 2024, 00:14

Civilians check the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, in the central Gaza Strip, on Friday, amid the on-going war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. | AFP photo

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Friday that 37 people had been killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall war death toll to 45,436.

The ministry also said in a statement that at least 1,08,038 people had been wounded in more than 14 months of war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack.

The Israeli military reported launching an operation on Friday targeting Hamas militants near one of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, while Hamas accused it of storming the facility and evacuating those inside.

The operation, centred near the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, followed an announcement from the hospital on Thursday that five of its staff members were killed in an Israeli strike.

The military claimed in a statement that the hospital had become ‘a key stronghold for terrorist organisations and continues to be used as a hideout for terrorist operatives’ since Israeli forces began broader operations in northern Gaza in October.

Acting on intelligence regarding ‘terrorist infrastructure and operatives’ in the hospital’s vicinity, the military said it began operations there on Friday.

‘The troops are conducting targeted operations in the area, while mitigating harm to uninvolved civilians, patients, and medical personnel,’ it added.

Since October 6, Israel has intensified its land and air offensive in northern Gaza, stating its goal is to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping in the region.

Before initiating the latest operation near the hospital, the military said its troops had ‘facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients, and medical personnel’.

But Hamas said Israeli forces had stormed the facility on Friday.

‘The occupation army stormed Kamal Adwan hospital forcing medical staff, patients, the wounded, and displaced people to evacuate,’ it said in a statement.

Hamas further accused Israeli forces of isolating and detaining those evacuated, saying: ‘Hamas holds the occupation fully responsible for the lives of patients, wounded, and medical staff after they were cut off from communication, arrested and taken to an unknown location.’

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, quoting hospital director Hossam Abu Safiyeh, said that the military had ‘set on fire all surgery departments of the hospital’.

Safiyeh said the military had also ‘evacuated the entire medical staff and displaced people’.

‘There are a large number of injuries among the medical team.’

As of Friday morning, the hospital housed around 350 people, including 75 injured and sick patients, along with 180 medical staff, Safiyeh said.

Witnesses in the area said that the hospital had been evacuated and hundreds of people living in the vicinity were ‘forced to seek refuge at Al-Fakhura school and the Indonesian hospital’ in Jabalia.

AFP was unable to contact Safiyeh and other hospital officials or independently verify how many people had been evacuated from the facility.

The Israeli military has regularly accused Hamas of using hospitals as command and control centres for attacks against its forces throughout the war. Hamas has denied these accusations.

On Thursday, Safiyeh said that five staff members had been killed in an Israeli strike.

In recent days, Safiyeh has repeatedly raised concerns about the hospital’s situation, accusing Israeli forces of targeting the facility.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza hospital shut after Israeli raid, director held: health officials

An Israeli military raid targeting Hamas members has forced a major hospital in northern Gaza out of service and led to the detention of its director, the WHO and health officials said Saturday

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Gaza hospital shut after Israeli raid, director held: health officials

Photo: Collected

An Israeli military raid targeting Hamas members has forced a major hospital in northern Gaza out of service and led to the detention of its director, the WHO and health officials said Saturday.

The assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital has rendered the facility "useless", further worsening Gaza's severe health crisis, the Palestinian territory's health officials said.

The World Health Organisation said the operation had put the "last major health facility in north Gaza out of service".

"Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid," it added in a statement on X.

The WHO said 60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including some on ventilators, reportedly remained in the hospital.

Patients in moderate to severe condition were forced to evacuate to the destroyed, non-functioning Indonesian Hospital, the UN health agency said, adding it was "deeply concerned for their safety".

Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry reported that Israeli forces had detained Kamal Adwan's director, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, along with several medical staff members.

AFP was unable to independently verify whether Abu Safiyeh had been detained, but multiple attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Abu Safiyeh was held alongside its north Gaza chief, Ahmed Hassan al-Kahlout.

The Israeli military did not comment on the detentions.

One of the Gazans evacuated from the hospital, who asked to be identified only as Mohammad for security reasons, told AFP some evacuees were interrogated about Hamas.

"As we began to exit, the army asked all young men to take off their clothes and walk outside the hospital," said Mohammad, whose brother was a patient there.

"They (soldiers) took tens of young men, as well as physicians and patients, to an unknown place... The young men were interrogated, they were asked about resistance fighters, Hamas and weapons."

Ammar al-Barsh, a resident of Jabalia where the military has focused its assault in recent weeks, said the raid on Kamal Adwan and its environs had left dozens of homes in the area in ruins.

"The situation is catastrophic, there is no medical service, no ambulances and no civil defence in the north," Barsh, 50, told AFP.

The army "continues to raid the Kamal Adwan Hospital and the surrounding houses, and we hear gunfire from Israeli drones and artillery shelling", he added.

- 'Heinous crime' -

In the days leading up to the raid, Abu Safiyeh had repeatedly warned about the hospital's precarious situation, accusing Israeli forces of targeting the facility.

On Monday, he issued a statement accusing Israel of targeting the hospital "with the intent to kill and forcibly displace the people inside".

Since October 6, Israel has intensified its land and air offensive in northern Gaza, saying its goal is to prevent Hamas men from regrouping.

The military said Friday that it was acting on intelligence regarding "terrorist infrastructure and operatives" in the hospital's vicinity.

Before initiating the latest operation near the hospital, the military said its troops had "facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients, and medical personnel".

Hamas has denied claims its operatives were present at the hospital.

"The enemy's lies about the hospital aim to justify the heinous crime committed by the occupation army today, involving the evacuation and burning of all hospital departments as part of a plan for extermination and forced displacement," Hamas said in a statement.

Gaza's health ministry had earlier quoted Abu Safiyeh reporting that the military had "set on fire all surgery departments of the hospital".

"There are a large number of injuries among the medical team."​

 

[Saif]

Gaza healthcare nearing ‘total collapse’ due to Israeli strikes: UN

A United Nations report published Tuesday found that Israeli strikes on and near hospitals in the Gaza Strip had left healthcare in the Palestinian territory on the verge of collapse.

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Gaza healthcare nearing ‘total collapse’ due to Israeli strikes: UN
Agence France-Presse . Geneva 31 December, 2024, 22:33

A Palestinian girl walks back into her tent at a makeshift camp housing displaced Palestinians in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, amid the continuing war between Israel and the militant Hamas group. The majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, by the war that began with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. | AFP photo

A United Nations report published Tuesday found that Israeli strikes on and near hospitals in the Gaza Strip had left healthcare in the Palestinian territory on the verge of collapse.

The report by the UN human rights office said such strikes raised grave concerns about Israel’s compliance with international law.

‘Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks on and near hospitals in Gaza, and associated combat, pushed the healthcare system to the brink of total collapse, with catastrophic effect on Palestinians’ access to health and medical care,’ the UN human rights office said in a statement.

Its 23-page report, entitled ‘Attacks on hospitals during the escalation of hostilities in Gaza’, looked at the period from October 7, 2023 to June 30, 2024.

It said that during this time, there were at least 136 strikes on 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities, claiming significant casualties among doctors, nurses, medics and other civilians and causing significant damage to, if not the complete destruction of, civilian infrastructure.

The report noted that medical personnel and hospitals are specifically protected under international humanitarian law, provided they do not commit, or are not used to commit, acts harmful to the enemy outside their humanitarian function.

It found that Israel’s repeated claims that Gaza hospitals were being improperly used for military purposes by Palestinian groups ‘vague’.

‘Insufficient information has so far been made publicly available to substantiate these allegations, which have remained vague and broad, and in some cases appear contradicted by publicly available information,’ the report said.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said Gaza hospitals had become a ‘death trap’.

‘As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap,’ he said.

‘The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times.’

The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

That resulted in 1,208 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 45,500 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.

The report concluded with a call for credible investigations into the incidents detailed, and said they had to be independent given the ‘limitations’ of Israel’s justice system in respect of the conduct of its armed forces.

‘It is essential that there be independent, thorough and transparent investigations of all of these incidents, and full accountability for all violations of international humanitarian and human rights law which have taken place,’ said Turk.

‘All medical workers arbitrarily detained must be immediately released.

‘It must also be a priority for Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure and facilitate access to adequate healthcare for the Palestinian population, and for future recovery and reconstruction efforts to prioritise the restoration of the medical capacity which has been destroyed over the last 14 months of intense conflict.’​

 

[Saif]

Gaza babies die from winter cold

Yahya al-Batran clutched the tiny clothes of his dead newborn son Jumaa, just days after the baby died from the cold in their tent in war-torn Gaza.

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Gaza babies die from winter cold
Say medics, families as Israeli attacks push healthcare ‘to brink of collapse’

Yahya al-Batran clutched the tiny clothes of his dead newborn son Jumaa, just days after the baby died from the cold in their tent in war-torn Gaza.

"We are watching our children die before our eyes," said the 44-year-old. Their baby was one of the seven children who died from the cold within the span of a week, the Hamas-run territory's health ministry said on Monday.

"We fled the bombing from Beit Lahia, only for them to die from the cold here?" said the child's mother Noura al-Batran, referring to their hometown in northern Gaza.

The 38-year-old is still recovering from giving birth prematurely to Jumaa and his surviving twin brother, Ali, who is being treated in an intensive care unit at a hospital in southern Gaza.

Completely destitute and repeatedly displaced by the Israel's offensive in Gaza, the Batran family live in a makeshift tent in Deir el-Balah made of worn-out blankets and fabric.

Like hundreds of others now living in a date palm orchard, they have struggled to keep warm and dry amid heavy rains and temperatures that have dropped as low as eight degrees Celsius.

Displaced Palestinian children walk through a puddle of rain water at a makeshift camp housing displaced Palestinians in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday. Photo: AFP
"We don't have enough blankets or suitable clothing. I saw my baby start to freeze, his skin turned blue and then he died," she cried.

The twins were born prematurely and she said the doctor decided to take the babies out of the incubator despite the family not having access to heating.

On a rain-soaked mat, the father hugged his older children tight with blankets and worn-out cloth in a corner of their tent.

He then placed a small pot of water on the stove to make tea, which he then mixed with dry bread to make a meagre lunch for his family with a little cheese and the thyme-based spice blend called zaatar. Like thousands of other families enduring dire conditions, they face shortages of food, fuel, and medicine, with the United Nations warning of an "imminent collapse" of the healthcare system.

The Hamas government press office in Gaza warned on Monday of the impact of more harsh weather expected in the coming days, saying it posed a "real threat to two million displaced people," the majority of whom live in tents.

In southern Gaza's Khan Yunis, Mahmoud al-Fasih said he found his infant daughter, Seela, "frozen from the cold" in their small tent near al-Mawasi beach, where they were displaced from Gaza City.

He rushed her to the hospital in the area that Israel has designated a "humanitarian zone", but she was already dead. Ahmad Al-Farra, a doctor and director of the emergency and children's department at Nasser Hospital, told AFP that the three-week-old baby arrived at the hospital with "severe hypothermia, without vital signs, in cardiac arrest that led to her death".​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza

Israeli strikes killed at least 12 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, officials said on Wednesday, as the nearly 15-month war ground on into the new year with no end in sight...

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Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza
United News of Bangladesh/AP . Deir Al-Balah, Gaza Strip 02 January, 2025, 00:27

Israeli strikes killed at least 12 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, officials said on Wednesday, as the nearly 15-month war ground on into the new year with no end in sight.

One strike hit a home in the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza, the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory, where Israel has been waging a major operation since early October. Gaza’s health ministry said seven people were killed, including a woman and four children, and at least a dozen other people were wounded.

Another strike overnight in the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed a woman and a child, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies. The military ordered people to evacuate an area near Bureij overnight, saying it would strike there in response to recent rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

A third strike early Wednesday in the southern city of Khan Younis killed three people, according to the nearby Nasser Hospital and the European Hospital, which received the bodies.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and abducting around 250. About 100 hostages are still held in Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It says women and children make up more than half the fatalities but does not say how many of those killed were militants.

The Israeli military says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas. The army says it has killed 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced some 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times.

Hundreds of thousands are living in tents on the coast as winter brings frequent rainstorms and temperatures drop below 10 degrees Celsius at night. At least six infants and another person have died of hypothermia, according to the health ministry.

American and Arab mediators have spent nearly a year trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release, but those efforts have repeatedly stalled. Hamas has demanded a lasting truce, while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanayhu has vowed to keep fighting until ‘total victory’ over the militants.

More than 82,000 Israelis moved abroad in 2024 and only 33,000 people immigrated to the country, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics said. Another 23,000 Israelis returned after long periods abroad.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people gathered on Istanbul’s Galata Bridge on New Year’s Day to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Demonstrators waved Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanted ‘Free Palestine’ in the protest, organized by the National Will Platform, a coalition of more than 300 pro-Palestinian and Islamic groups.

Bilal Erdogan, the son of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressed the crowd, urging support for Gaza and condemning Israel’s actions there. He referred to the recent ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad by rebel forces.

‘Muslims in Syria were determined, patient and they achieved victory. After Syria, Gaza will emerge victoriously from the siege,’ he said.

Drone video showed thousands of people filling the bridge and the adjacent Eminönü and Sirkeci districts.

President Erdogan has been a fierce critic of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.​