al jazeeraWHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns of “catastrophic hunger” in Gaza, with 8,000 children under five years old suffering acute malnutrition in the war-torn territory.
In the north of the Gaza Strip, a government official tells Al Jazeera that food shortages have reached a crisis point as most food commodities have run out.
Hamas said it has shown “full positivity” in efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement with Israel, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says some changes to the deal proposed by Hamas are not workable.
At least 37,202 people have been killed and 84,932 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll in Israel from Hamas’s attacks stands at 1,139, with dozens of people still held captive in Gaza.
Israelis in the Galilee towns of Yehiam and Klil have been warned to take cover from incoming aerial attacks, the Times of Israel reports.
There were no immediate further details available, the Times of Israel said.
The latest warnings come as Hezbollah says it launched one of its largest rocket barrages at northern Israel since the start of the war on Gaza, after a senior Hezbollah commander was killed in southeastern Lebanon.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that a UN report accusing the country of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza is “ridden with lies and blood libels”.
“The report describes a fictional reality in which decades of terror attacks have disappeared, there are no continuous rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, and this is not a democratic country defending itself from a terror assault,” the ministry said in a statement, according to the Times of Israel.
On Wednesday, an independent UN investigation concluded that Israel committed crimes against humanity during its war in Gaza, including the crime of “extermination”.
The Commission of Inquiry accused Israel of carrying out “murder; gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys; forcible transfer; and torture and inhuman and cruel treatment”.
The report, due to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next week, also accused Hamas of committing war crimes, including sexual and gender-based violence, during the first months of the war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the war in Gaza was unlike anything he had experienced as head of the world body.
“We have witnessed … a unique level of destruction and … unique level of casualties in the Palestinian population during these months of war that has no precedent in any other situation that I’ve lived as Secretary-General of the United Nations,” Guterres told reporters on the sidelines of a forum at the UN’s headquarters in Geneva.
The UN chief also said it was “extremely difficult to support the population” of Gaza when it “is under fire”, and when Israeli forces are blockading Gaza’s borders, preventing the flow of humanitarian aid supplies, such as food, fuel, medicine and clean water.
“It’s extremely difficult to support the population when there are so many restrictions to the entry of the necessary supplies for humanitarian aid,” he said.
Here’s more from the testimonies shared by prisoners from Gaza who were freed by Israeli forces and spoke with Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor at the Kamal Adwan Hospital:
Amr Abdel Fattah al-Aklouk said he was a Gaza Strip resident who was undergoing medical treatment in occupied Jerusalem in October. He was arrested three times since then by Israeli forces, and told Euro-Med of interactions with other prisoners from Gaza.
“There was a group of Gaza Strip prisoners in custody who were designated as ‘security prisoners’,” said al-Aklouk.
“All day long, they endure oppression and random, violent beatings that cause their bodies to bleed,” he said, adding that he had spoken to one prisoner, who had asked him to get news to his family in Gaza, the day before he was killed during torture.
One 65-year-old man from Jabalia, in the north of the Gaza Strip, who did not want to share his name with Euro-Med for safety reasons says that the prisoners were kept handcuffed at all times.
“From the moment of our arrest, we were handcuffed; we had to wear them even when we ate or used the restroom,” he said.
“Before they [released us], one of the guards threatened me, saying, ‘Do not complain about anything to the press, or we will come to you again.’” he said.
The Israeli military has raided the occupied West Bank city of Jenin and shot a Palestinian man, the Wafa news agency reports.
Israeli forces wounded the man after clashes erupted in the city’s Jabriyat neighbourhood. Ambulances were prevented from reaching the victim, according to Wafa, and his condition is unknown.
Israeli forces have also carried out raids in the following locations:
Mr.BadGuy
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Mr.BadGuy
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These soldiers are from a country whose president is a Jew Zelensky. Orthodox churches are also being destroyed in this country. Synagogues are not touched. Surprisingly, it turns out that Jews get along well with the Bandera Nazis.