live blog
According to Israeli sources, more than 40 Hamas terrorists were killed in an operation at the Al-Shifa clinic in Gaza. The Palestinian health authority says at least 20 people have died in Israeli air strikes. All developments in the live blog.
The UN World Food Program (WFP) has warned of the mass deaths of children in the Gaza Strip. If nutritious food is not quickly delivered to the coastal area, “they will die in the hundreds and thousands,” said WFP chief economist Arif Husain in New York. “In the north and the rest of the Gaza Strip, time is running out for many, many people,” he said. “That’s why children die.”
Husain said the WFP has enough food for the approximately 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip. Without a ceasefire, better access and security for the aid workers, they cannot reach all people at risk of hunger. “That’s why a ceasefire is the necessary condition for us to be able to stop this famine in the north of Gaza and, frankly, in the rest of the country,” he said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week in an effort to bring about a ceasefire in the war between Israel and the militant Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip and increase humanitarian aid. Blinken will hold talks in Jeddah with Saudi Arabian officials on Wednesday before traveling to Cairo on Thursday, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. Discussions with Egyptian representatives are planned in Cairo. Along with Qatar, the USA and Egypt are important mediating countries in the war between Israel and Hamas.
According to the Syrian Defense Ministry, Israel fired rockets at several military targets in the area around the Syrian capital Damascus. The Syrian air defense “intercepted the Israeli missiles and shot down some of them,” the ministry said in a statement. There was damage to property.
According to the health authority in the Gaza Strip, at least 20 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on Rafah and central parts of the Gaza Strip. In the city near the Egyptian border, 14 people were killed and dozens more injured in attacks on several houses and apartments. Six more people were killed in an airstrike on a house in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army says it killed more than 40 fighters from the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas and arrested more than 200 terror suspects during the operation at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari announced these updated figures in the evening. More than 20 terrorists were killed in the nighttime operation in the hospital area, including Faik al-Mabhouh, head of a Hamas internal security department. More than 20 Hamas fighters were eliminated around the clinic in the northern coastal city of Gaza, Hagari said. The information provided by the Israeli military has not yet been independently verified.
There was initially no official confirmation from Hamas of Al-Mabhouh’s death. The terrorist organization continues to systematically fight from hospitals and civilian facilities and uses civilians and patients as human shields, the Israeli army spokesman said. It tried to rebuild its base in the Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, and use it as a refuge for fleeing terrorists. “We will not allow this and will strike wherever Hamas tries to regain control,” the army spokesman said.
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.
Mossad chief Barnea traveled to Qatar to negotiate a ceasefire and the release of hostages. After a long break, US President Biden spoke on the phone again with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Monday’s live blog for reading.