Mourners held funeral prayers Wednesday morning outside a hospital in central Gaza for 28 people killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on urban refugee camps the previous night. Associated Press footage showed mourners praying over the bodies, which were wrapped in funeral shrouds, before the bodies were taken away in donkey carts for burial.
As fighting rages on in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is determined to carry out a Rafah ground offensive, despite United States President Joe Biden’s misgivings.
Earlier, Qatari officials said they were “cautiously optimistic” following talks with Israel’s intelligence chief in Doha aimed at trying to reach a cease-fire. But, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said Tuesday that an Israeli ground operation in Rafah would set back any talks.
At least 31,819 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. A United Nations food agency warned that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza.
Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people in the surprise Oct. 7 attack out of Gaza that triggered the war, and abducted another 250 people. Hamas is still believed to be holding some 100 people hostage, as well as the remains of 30 others.
Currently:
— Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, praises the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s "waterfront property"
— Heavy fighting rages around Gaza’s biggest hospital as Israel raids it for a second day
— Netanyahu agrees to send Israeli officials to Washington to discuss a prospective Rafah operation
— Gaza and Haiti are on the brink of famine, experts say
— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Here's the latest:
JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities have ordered a group of Palestinian medical patients who received treatment for life-threatening illnesses in Israel to return to the war-torn Gaza Strip, saying they no longer are in need of care.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, a local advocacy group, says at least 22 Palestinians are affected by the order. It says they include cancer patients, babies, new mothers and older people.
Before the war erupted last October, Israel allowed Palestinians with serious conditions to enter the country for treatment not available in Gaza. Those services have all but halted since the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas.
Nearly six months of fighting have displaced over 80% of Gaza’s population, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and left the territory’s health care system barely functioning. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said the Israeli evacuation order has endangered the lives of recovering patients.
“Returning residents to Gaza during a military conflict and a humanitarian crisis is against international law and poses a deliberate risk to innocent lives,” the group said. “All the more so when it concerns patients who may face a death sentence due to insanitary conditions and hunger, along with the unlikely availability of medical care.”
Aseel Abu Raas, a spokeswoman for the group, said COGAT, the Israeli defense agency responsible for Palestinian civilians, had ordered the patients to leave by 3 a.m. Thursday.
In a statement, COGAT said Palestinians who do not need medical treatment will be returned to Gaza while those still needing treatment will stay, but did not elaborate.
Officials at two of the affected hospitals, Augusta Victoria and Makassed, east Jerusalem institutions that serve the Palestinian population, did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Sheba Hospital, a major Israeli institution, declined comment.
Israel previously rounded up and deported several thousand Palestinian laborers from Gaza who had been working in Israel before the war.
It remains unclear how many Palestinian medical patients remain in Israel for treatment.
WASHINGTON — Famine is imminent for Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip and is projected to affect adults and children between now and May, according to a World Bank food security report released on Wednesday.
“The situation in the Gaza Strip has reached catastrophic levels,” the report warned.
Roughly 1.11 million people, or half of the Gaza Strip’s population, are in Phase 5 of the IPC Food Insecurity Scale — known as the “Catastrophe Phase” of extreme food shortage and unable to meet basic needs. Virtually all households skip meals daily and a significant portion of children under two are suffering from acute malnutrition, the report states.
The report recommends “restoring humanitarian access, curbing hostilities, and ensuring the safe delivery of aid to the population in need.”
Wednesday's report echoes similar findings released Monday in a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an agency that monitors hunger globally.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s supreme leader in his Persian New Year speech, said that his country will continue supporting anyone who fights with the Zionist Regime, state TV reported Wednesday.
In a live broadcast, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that a great oppression is being done in the region due to the existence of the Zionist regime. “This is a very great oppression that has been going on for 10 years and this oppression must be stopped,” he said.
“Whoever enters this great jihad, humanitarian jihad, Islamic jihad, conscientious jihad, we support him and help him, and with the grace of God, we will achieve our goal,” Khamenei added.
The Iranian leader also rejected any accusation by the United States against his country about its role in the Israel-Hamas war and called it a U.S. miscalculation.
Khamenei also said that U.S. understanding of regional issues is wrong.
“Anywhere in this region — in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon — any action is taken by the fighting and brave forces of resistance, the Americans attributed it to Iran. This false analogy will definitely bring America to its knees,” he said.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Mourners held funeral prayers Wednesday morning outside a hospital in central Gaza for 28 people killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on urban refugee camps.
Associated Press footage showed mourners praying over the bodies, which were wrapped in funeral shrouds, before the bodies were taken away in donkey carts for burial.
Nineteen people, including five women and nine children, were killed when a strike flattened a family home late Tuesday in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp. Another person was killed in a separate strike in the camp. A strike in the nearby Bureij camp killed eight people, including three women.
The dead were brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, the main medical facility in central Gaza. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies and their names in hospital records.
Nuseirat and Bureij are among several dense, built-up refugee camps in Gaza that date back to 1948, when an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the war surrounding its creation. Refugees and their descendants make up a majority of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
