2023-10-22 16:57:16
The alert was given on Saturday October 21 by five UN agencies. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is now “catastrophic”. Hospitals are “overwhelmed” with injured people and children are “dying at an alarming rate”. In a statement, the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Development Program and the United Nations Population Fund recall that the situation humanitarian aid in Gaza was already “desperate” before the conflict triggered by the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel.
“Today it is catastrophic,” they continue, calling on the international community to “do more” to help the inhabitants of Gaza. “Time is running out before mortality rates skyrocket due to the outbreak of disease and lack of health care capacity,” they warn.
Six fuel tanks delivered to the Gaza Strip
Six tanker trucks transported fuel to the Gaza Strip from the Rafah crossing this Sunday afternoon, according to an AFP journalist and a Palestinian official at the crossing point. An AFP journalist saw six tanker trucks leaving the Rafah terminal. Questioned by AFP, a terminal official confirmed on condition of anonymity that they were transporting fuel which was already stored in a tank located in the crossing point between the Palestinian territory and Egypt.
READ ALSO >> Israel: why Hezbollah hesitates before “crossing the red line”
In addition, 17 aid trucks also crossed the Rafah terminal this Sunday. This is the second convoy in two days destined for the Palestinian territory since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas. On Saturday, after the passage of the first convoy of 20 trucks, the UN estimated that its cargo was equivalent to only 4% of Gaza’s daily imports before the start of the war and that at least 100 trucks per day would be needed to the 2.4 million Gazans, half of them children, deprived of everything.
Hezbollah would make the “mistake of its life” by going to war against Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanese Hezbollah this Sunday that it would “make the mistake of its life” if it decided to go to war against Israel. “This will make them regret the second Lebanese war (Editor’s note: in 2006) … We will strike with a power that they cannot imagine and which will be devastating for the State of Lebanon,” declared Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to troops in the north of the country.
“We will increase strikes,” says IDF spokesperson
At least 55 people were killed in the Gaza Strip overnight from Saturday to Sunday after the announcement of the intensification of Israeli bombardments, the Hamas government announced. In its latest report on Saturday, Hamas reported nearly 4,400 deaths, mostly civilians, in Israeli strikes triggered by the bloody attack it launched on October 7 against Israel and which left 1,400 dead. , most of them on the first day of the operation, and mostly civilians.
READ ALSO >> Stephen Walt on Israel-Palestine: “The two-state solution no longer seems possible to me”
Israel announced the intensification of its strikes on the Gaza Strip in preparation for a ground offensive on the Palestinian enclave. “As of today, we are going to increase strikes” on the Gaza Strip, General Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israeli army, warned on Saturday. The goal, according to him, is to “reduce the risks for our forces in the next stages” of the conflict. Since the Hamas attack on its territory, Israel has vowed to annihilate the Islamist movement, in power in the Gaza Strip since June 2007.
“We are going to enter Gaza, we are going to do it for an operational purpose, to destroy the infrastructure and the Hamas terrorists, and we are going to do it in a professional manner,” the head of state said on Saturday during a troop review. -Israeli major, General Herzi Halevi.
The United States is strengthening its military assets in the region
READ ALSO >> The Israel-Hamas war, “blessed bread” for Putin
The United States has indicated that it is strengthening its military assets in the region due to “recent escalations by Iran and its affiliated forces”. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the deployment of several anti-missile defense systems “across the region”, without specifying where exactly, and the placement in a state of “pre-deployment” of additional military assets, without specifying their number . “These measures will strengthen regional deterrence efforts, increase the protection of U.S. forces in the region and contribute to the defense of Israel,” he said.
A few hours later, this Sunday, the American Minister of Defense also warned this Sunday that the United States “would not hesitate to act” militarily against any “organization” or “country” which would be tempted to “expand ” the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas. Lloyd Austin hammered on ABC News at the address of “those who would seek to widen the conflict […] : Our advice is ‘don’t do it’. We preserve our right to defend ourselves and we will not hesitate to act accordingly.”
Yaël Braun-Pivet in Tel Aviv: “Nothing should prevent Israel from defending itself”
The President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, visiting Israel, indicated this Sunday that France “fully supports Israel”, believing that nothing should “prevent it from defending itself” in the war between it and Hamas. Palestinian. “France fully supports Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, a democracy which has been attacked in a terrible way. So we must make no mistake, neither in combat nor in words,” declared Yaël Braun-Pivet.
Force “is not a means” to resolve the crisis, according to Beijing
China believes that “force is not a means to resolve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and calls again for a ceasefire, its envoy for the Middle East pleaded in Egypt, as reported this Sunday Chinese diplomacy.
A “Peace Summit” was organized on Saturday in Egypt, where UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for action quickly to end “the nightmare”, after 15 days of war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas . On the sidelines of the summit, the Chinese envoy for the Middle East, Zhai Jun, met the head of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
The Chinese diplomat called for an “immediate ceasefire and an end to the fighting as quickly as possible”, his supervisory ministry said in a statement this Sunday. “China believes that force is not a way to resolve the problem and that responding to violence with violence will only lead to a vicious circle of revenge,” argued Zhai Jun, according to reported comments that do not mention neither Israel nor Hamas.
Israel says it killed ‘terrorists’ in airstrike on Jenin mosque
The Israeli army claimed this Sunday, October 22, to have killed, during an airstrike, “terrorists” sheltering in an underground passage of the Al-Ansar mosque in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank. “The army carried out an aerial attack on a terrorist compound belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives, who were responsible for several terrorist attacks in recent months, and who were planning another imminent terrorist attack,” the army said Israeli in a press release.
The director of the Jenin Red Crescent, Mahmoud Al-Saadi, was quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa as saying one person was killed and three others were injured in the strike.
READ ALSO >> War in Gaza: “Legally, Israel must distinguish between civilians and combatants”
According to the Israeli army, which carried out the operation jointly with the Israeli domestic intelligence service, the mosque served as a “command center for planning future attacks” and a “base for carrying them out”. Still according to the army, the “terrorist cell” organized an attack on October 14 near the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank using an explosive device but without causing any casualties. The Palestinian Health Ministry said two men were killed in the Jenin attack.
“Stop, stop!” : the pope calls for an end to the war
Pope Francis called on Sunday for an end to the war between Hamas and Israel and to allow more humanitarian aid to be delivered to the Gaza Strip.
“War is always a defeat, it is a destruction of human fraternity. Brothers, stop, stop!” he said after the traditional Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. “I renew my call for spaces to be opened, for humanitarian aid to continue to arrive and for the hostages to be released,” added the 86-year-old pontiff.
Calls for ceasefire in Gaza at ‘Peace Summit’
Calls for a truce between Israel and Palestinian Hamas to allow aid into Gaza came at Saturday’s “Peace Summit” in Egypt, where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for action quickly to put an end to “the nightmare”. Beyond the shared calls for the entry of aid to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, subject to an Israeli siege, the representatives of Western and Arab countries could not agree on a final communiqué, indicated Arab diplomats to the AFP.
READ ALSO >> Israel-Hamas War: for MBS, a dilemma and new opportunities
The negotiations failed on two points, according to them: on the one hand, “Western countries wanted a clear condemnation of Hamas”, whose attack on October 7 against Israel triggered a war that left 1,400 dead in this country. On the other, they demanded “a call for the release of the hostages”, some 200 people kidnapped during the attack by Hamas.
The Arab countries refused to include these points and the summit ended with a press release from the Egyptian presidency denouncing “an international scene which has revealed in recent decades its incapacity to find a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian question”.
#Hamas #fuel #tanks #delivered #Gaza #Strip #LExpress