live blog
Israel will again take part in indirect negotiations in Qatar over a hostage deal today. US President Biden believes it is urgently necessary to increase aid for the people in Gaza. All developments in the live blog.
According to the health authority, 84 people have been killed under the radical Islamic Hamas government in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours. 116 were injured. This brings the number of people killed in the coastal strip since the start of the war to 31,726.
Conflict parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by the Palestinian and Israeli conflict parties cannot be directly verified by an independent body.
The Israeli military has called on the population of the Gaza Strip to evacuate Al-Shifa Hospital in the city of Gaza. “To ensure your safety, you must leave the area immediately,” army spokesman Avichay Adraee told the online service X on Monday. “All people on site” should first move west and then south to a “humanitarian area.”
The director of Diakonie Disaster Aid, Martin Keßler, is critical of the dropping of relief supplies over the Gaza Strip. It’s not very efficient if “things fall somewhere disorderly,” said Keßler on Deutschlandfunk. The aim must be to open the border crossings so that around 500 trucks per day can enter the area overland, as was the case before the Hamas attack on October 7th last year. There are currently around 270 truck deliveries every day. There is “sheer chaos” in the Gaza Strip, said Keßler. Without a ceasefire, without a “fairly sorted situation,” it would be extremely difficult to provide for the people.
US President Joe Biden has once again made it clear that he believes an increase in humanitarian aid for the people in the Gaza Strip and an agreement on a ceasefire are urgently needed. At a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar at the White House to mark the Irish holiday of St. Patrick’s Day, Biden said the two agreed on the need to urgently increase humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip and to reach a ceasefire agreement that would allow the hostages to be released. must be achieved. We must also move forward with a two-state solution, which is the “only path” to lasting peace and security.
Gray areas: Built-up areas in the Gaza Strip
More than five months after the major attack on Israel by the militant Islamist Hamas, another Israeli soldier has been declared dead. The Israeli military said 22-year-old Daniel Perez was killed on October 7 and taken to the Gaza Strip. “His body is in the hands of a terrorist organization,” the statement said. This brings the number of Israeli hostages declared dead whose bodies are in the hands of Hamas to 33, including eight soldiers. It was only on Wednesday that Israel declared 19-year-old soldier Itay Chen dead. The German-Israeli had also been killed on October 7th.
Israel will take part in indirect negotiations for a temporary ceasefire and the release of hostages in the Gaza war for the first time in weeks. The Israeli security cabinet approved the departure of a delegation to Qatar late in the evening, the Israeli news site “Ynet” reported. Israel’s negotiators, led by Mossad foreign intelligence chief David Barnea, are expected to leave for Doha today. There, the mediators Qatar, Egypt and the USA are trying to advance the recently stalled talks on a temporary ceasefire and an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel’s security cabinet only gave the negotiating team a general mandate, wrote the well-connected Israeli journalist Barak Ravid from the news portal “Axios” after the meeting on the X platform.
The Israeli army says it has launched an operation at Al-Shifa Hospital in the city of Gaza in the Gaza Strip. The soldiers “are currently carrying out a targeted operation in the area of Al-Shifa Hospital,” the army said early this morning. “The operation is based on information indicating use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists,” the army said in its justification.
Eyewitnesses on site told the AFP news agency that Israel had carried out airstrikes in the al-Rimal district, where the hospital is located. Dozens of tanks were positioned around the hospital building. Al-Shifa Hospital is the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army entered the hospital grounds for the first time in November.
Jan-Christoph Kitzler, ARD Tel Aviv, tagesschau, March 18, 2024 8:05 a.m
In the future, Israel wants to commemorate the massacre of October 7, 2023 with a day of remembrance. The German Air Force has dropped another load of aid supplies over the Gaza Strip. Sunday’s live blog for reading.