Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing south on foot with only what they can carry after running out of food and water in the north of the Gaza Strip, a UN agency said Wednesday, hours after Israel said its forces had “stormed” Gaza City and were operating “in the heart” of the Palestinian enclave’s most populous city. All times are Paris time (GMT+1).
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The pace of Palestinian civilians fleeing the combat zone in northern Gaza has picked up as Israel’s air and ground campaign there intensifies, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Wednesday, adding that 15,000 people had fled the north on Tuesday alone.
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Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said late on Tuesday that Israeli soldiers had “stormed” Gaza City and were operating “in the heart” of the enclave’s most populous hub.
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The United States said it opposed any long-term occupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel and any forced relocation of Palestinians from the enclave, a day after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel would take “overall security responsibility” of the enclave for an indefinite period after its war with Hamas.
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The death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to at least 10,328 people, including at least 4,237 children, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has said.
9:40am: G7 says ‘supports humanitarian pauses and corridors’ in Gaza
Top diplomats from the G7 countries have announced a unified stance on the Israel-Hamas war after talks in Tokyo, condemning Hamas, supporting Israel’s right to self-defence and calling for “humanitarian pauses” to speed aid to desperate civilians in the Gaza Strip.
“We stress the need for urgent action to address the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Gaza … we support humanitarian pauses and corridors to facilitate urgently needed assistance, civilian movement, and the release of hostages,” the ministers said in a joint statement.
The statement also said the ministers “emphasise Israel’s right to defend itself and its people in accordance with international law as it seeks to prevent a recurrence” of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7.
It added: “We call on Iran to refrain from providing support for Hamas and taking further actions that destabilise the Middle East, including support for Lebanese Hezbollah and other non-state actors, and to use its influence with those groups to de-escalate regional tensions.”
8:35am: Oxfam warns of ‘crisis of epic proportions’ in besieged Gaza
More than 70 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have already fled their homes, but the growing numbers making their way south point to an increasingly desperate situation in and around Gaza’s largest city, which has come under heavy Israeli bombardment.
For a deeper perspective on the harrowing humanitarian situation on the ground, FRANCE 24’s Mark Owen is joined by Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel.
7:40am: Israeli settler violence pushes West Bank farmers off their land
Since the October 7 attacks by Hamas militants in southern Israel, there’s been mounting violence in the occupied West Bank, where more than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the past month, either in army raids or in attacks by illegal Israeli settlers.
US President Joe Biden has spoken out on the sharp rise in settler attacks, saying that violence by “extremist settlers … has to stop now”.
The attacks are driving some Palestinians from their homes and off their farmland, bringing this tense region to boiling point. FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris Trent, Cécile Galluccio and Raïd Abu Zaideh sent this report.
6:55am: More Palestinians fleeing combat zone in northern Gaza, UN says
The pace of Palestinian civilians fleeing the combat zone in northern Gaza has picked up as Israel’s air and ground campaign there intensifies, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has said.
The UN agency said about 15,000 people had fled on Tuesday, compared to 5,000 on Monday and 2,000 on Sunday.
The densely populated northern area of Gaza, specifically Gaza City and adjacent crowded urban refugee camps, is the focus of Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas, the militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years.
5:31am: Israel not planning to reoccupy Gaza, says minister of strategic affairs
Ron Dermer, Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and part of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, told the BBC that Israeli forces would not reoccupy Gaza, but carry out security operations against anything they saw as a threat.
Israel withdrew its troops from the territory, which it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, in 2005.
5:14am: Doctors Without Borders employee killed, group says ‘no place in Gaza is safe’
An employee of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has been killed in Gaza along with several family members, the group said Tuesday.
Mohammed Al Ahel, a laboratory technician, was killed in his home in the Shati refugee camp when the area was bombed and his building collapsed, MSF said in a statement.
“Today, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is mourning the loss of one of our team members in Gaza, Mohammed Al Ahel, who was killed along with several members of his family on November 6,” the medical charity said.
“It is clear that no place in Gaza is safe from brutal and indiscriminate bombing,” it said.
“Our repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire have gone unanswered, but we insist that it is the only way to prevent more senseless deaths across Gaza and allow adequate humanitarian aid into the Strip,” the charity said.
5:03am: 40 Filipinos leave Gaza through Rafah crossing
Dozens of Filipinos fled from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip into Egypt through the Rafah crossing after Filipino diplomats negotiated for their safe passage and Qatar mediated for the border to be opened, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Wednesday.
The 40 Filipinos were travelling to the Egyptian capital of Cairo, where they planned to take flights back to the Philippines, Marcos said in a video message in Manila. Two Filipino doctors managed to leave the Gaza Strip into Egypt last week.
4:45am: House votes to censure Democratic Rep. for comments critical of Israel
The House voted late Tuesday to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – the only Palestinian American in Congress – an extraordinary rebuke of her rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war.
The 234-188 tally came after enough Democrats joined with Republicans to censure Tlaib, a punishment one step below expulsion from the House. The three-term congresswoman has long been a target of criticism for her views on the decades-long conflict in the Middle East.
4:39am: G7 group tries to find common stance on war in Gaza
The Group of 7 leading industrial democracies worked to forge a unified stance on the Israel-Hamas war at intensive meetings in Tokyo on Wednesday, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior diplomats looking to contain a worsening humanitarian crisis and stop a spillover of fighting into the wider Middle East.
Blinken, who arrived in Tokyo after a whirlwind tour of the Middle East, said it’s crucial to find a unified stance on the war in Israel, similar to what diplomats have done over Ukraine and other major issues. The ministers are also trying to keep existing differences on Gaza from deepening
Key developments from Tuesday, November 7:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel’s military was encircling Gaza City and operating inside it. Netanyahu also said his country will take “overall security responsibility” of the Gaza Strip for an indefinite period after its war with Hamas.
Israelis observed a minute of silence on Tuesday to mark a month since the October 7 attacks that saw Hamas militants slaughter 1,400 people, most of them civilians, and take more than 200 hostages to the Gaza Strip.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said a humanitarian convoy came under fire in Gaza City on Tuesday but was able to deliver medical supplies to Al Shifa hospital. Two trucks were damaged and a driver was lightly wounded, the organisation said.
The death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to at least 10,328 people, including at least 4,237 children, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has said.
Read our blog to see how yesterday’s events unfolded.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
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