2023-10-19 21:24:31
Time.news – Eight children, all members of the same family, died in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, in one of the Israeli bombings on the Palestinian enclave. It is one of the countless heartbreaking tragedies of these thirteen days of war, which began with the Hamas attack on Israel. The small bodies were lined up on the morgue floor, along with the other two family members who also died in the attack. It was the clan of the al-Bakri family, rescuers and witnesses said.
At the European hospital, the small bodies were covered with white sheets: Dyala (who was 2 years old), Ayman (3), Hamada (5 years old) and Zaher (2) Bakri, as well as Oudai and Jamal Abou Al-Naja and Nabil and Acil Omran, who were between two and five years old. “They were sleeping when (the Israelis, ed.) destroyed the house which collapsed on their heads”, the patriarch of the Bakri family, Abu Mohammad Wafi al-Bakri, who is 67 years old, told the AFP agency. According to witnesses, they were all on the ground floor of the family’s three-story home, located between Khan Younis and Rafah, and their bodies were recovered an hour after the raid.
Jihad al-Bakri, the father of Ayman, Hamada and Dyala, had left home”ten minutes before the bombing to look for water“, says the grandfather. “None of my children are linked to Palestinian organizations. There were no men in the house at the time of the attack.”
In Rafah, another Israeli raid claimed the lives of a mother, Arij Marwan al-Banna, and her two daughters, Sarah and Samya, who were under the age of ten, Palestinian medical sources added. Arij Marwan al-Banna had fled her home in Gaza City after the evacuation order issued by the Israeli army and had gone to take refuge with her parents in Rafah, in the south. She was seven months pregnant: o doctors at the hospital in Rafah they performed the autopsy with cesarean section, but the baby was already dead.
Gaza collapsing (by Massimo Maugeri)
Race against time for theaccess of humanitarian aid to Gaza: in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East, the spotlight is on the time it will take to get food and medicine to the Strip, where the situation is increasingly dramatic. According to the United Nations almost the half the population has been displaced and the decrease in essential resources (food, water and medicines) threatens to turn into a disaster for the over two million residents.
Il Rafah crossingsouth of the Strip towards Egypt, is still closed, but according to the New York Times and according to Egyptian press sources, it could be open as early as tomorrow: for the NYT it would have been reached an agreementcoordinated by the United Nations, to allow trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt using the Rafah crossing.
The agreement provides that the United Nations flag will be raised at the crossing and that the international observers monitor the trucks of aid before it enters Gaza. The latter request was made by Israel.
United Nations emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said that Gaza needs at least 100 trucks of humanitarian aid per day through the Rafah crossing: Biden, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had reached an agreement to allow the entry of a maximum of 20 trucks. “We have to start with a large number of trucks and we have to get to 100 trucks a day which are used for the aid program coming to Gaza,” he added.
© Mohammed Faiq/ AFP
Gaza after an Israeli bombing
The pressure on Israel to allow the opening of humanitarian access, carried out for days by the American administration, was confirmed today by the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during his visit to Tel Aviv. Sunak confirmed London’s full support for Israel and after meeting the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, said he had “agreed on the importance of urgently providing humanitarian support to the Palestinians in Gaza who are also suffering”.
And while Israeli incursions into Gaza continue, the situation remains very high tension on Israel’s northern border with Lebanonwith the risk that the conflict could spread also to other areas of the Middle East: the Israeli Defense Forces and Hezbollah militias continue to exchange mutual attacks: two Kornet anti-tank missiles were launched from Lebanon towards the Israeli settlement of al-Manara and Israel responded with fire from artillery on the outskirts of Mees Al-Jabal, on the Lebanese side of the border.
© Said Khatib/AFP
Bodies of bombing victims in Gaza
The American, British and German embassies urged their compatriots to leave Lebanon as soon as possible. The Israeli army, which today updated the number of people taken hostage by Hamas and detained in Gaza after the October 7 attack to 203, also said it had killed the head of Hamas’ national security forces, Jehad Mheisen , (news confirmed by the terrorist group itself).
New Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip have led to the death of Jamila al-Shanti, head of the Hamas political office, while the death toll from the bombings continues to rise. Also according to the IDF, Israeli security forces arrested over 80 suspects, including 63 Hamas members.
Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, said soldiers “will continue to comb the area” looking for other members of the group. The Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health has finally updated the death toll from the Israeli raids: since the beginning of the war, according to the Palestinian ministry, 3,785 people have died, over 12,000 have been injured and four hospitals have been closed.
25% of homes in Gaza destroyed
More than 98,000 residential units in Gaza, representing about 25% of the total in the Palestinian strip, have been destroyed or damaged in Israel’s current offensive against Hamas, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
In its daily report on the situation in the area after the October 7 terrorist attacks, the office emphasizes that this estimate is conservative, since it is impossible to access areas severely affected by the bombing, particularly in Gaza city. Only on the night between 17 and 18 October was a residential building destroyed in Al Bureij (central Gaza), where 25 people died, and several others suffered the same fate in Jabalia (north of the strip), where there were 37 dead, the United Nations highlighted.
Ankara on the field for aid
The Turkish army is ready to intervene to bring humanitarian aid and evacuate civilians from Gaza and in the meantime monitors the movements of American ships that have arrived in the Mediterranean in support of Israel. This was announced in a press release from the Turkish Ministry of Defense which specifies that the army is “awaiting directives”, but in any case “ready to take on the task”.
The statement also states that the Turkish navy “closely follows” the operations of the American warships sent to the Mediterranean to support Israel. “We were informed that they came to evacuate civilians. We are closely monitoring their operations,” writes Ankara’s Defense Ministry.
© Said Khatib/AFP
A man with the body of his daughter who perished in an Israeli bombing
The bombing of the hospital
It remains unclear who is responsible for the victims of Tuesday evening’s bombing of the Ahli Arab hospital. There are also doubts about the toll: according to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Territory there are 471 deaths, many fewer according to European intelligence which speaks of no more than 50 deaths. Israel said it had “evidence” that a rocket fired by Islamic Jihad that went off course caused the massacre.
Surgeons: “We use vinegar as an antiseptic”
Meanwhile, medical supplies are running out in hospitals across Gaza. Surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta says he has resorted to “corner store vinegar” to treat bacterial wounds and prevent infection. “It’s come to this,” he wrote on X.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN special rapporteur on the right to health, says: “The health sector in the Gaza enclave is at breaking point.”
“Gaza’s medical infrastructure has been irreparably damaged and health workers are working in a dire situation with limited access to medical supplies and conditions that do not allow them to provide timely and quality healthcare,” Mofokeng said.
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