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SvennoJ on 28 February 2024
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Time ran out at least a week ago

Two more children die of malnutrition in northern Gaza: Ministry

The Health Ministry in Gaza says two children died of dehydration and malnutrition at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, bringing the death toll from hunger in the territory today to six.

Earlier the ministry said four children died at the Kamal Adwan Hospital. The four children died of extreme dehydration and malnutrition at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, while seven others remain in critical condition. The hospital director, Ahmed al-Kahlout, also said that the hospital had gone out of service due to a lack of fuel to run its generators.

Yesterday, the ministry called for urgent aid to be delivered across Gaza, warning that thousands could die in the coming days if the hunger crisis is not addressed.

“We ask international agencies to intervene immediately to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in northern Gaza,” Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement. “The international community is facing a moral and humanitarian test to stop the genocide in Gaza.”

Doctors Without Borders says healthcare services in Gaza are ‘collapsing’

Meinie Nicolai, director of the group Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has said that medical workers are struggling to serve more than 1.5 million people in Gaza who are living in dire conditions with nowhere to go.

“They’re desperate. They live in makeshift shelters. It’s cold. There’s not enough food. There’s not enough water. There’s not enough healthcare,” said Nicolai.

"Healthcare has been attacked, it’s collapsing. The whole system is collapsing. We are working from tents trying to do what we can. We treat for the wounded. With the displacements, people’s wounds have been infected. And I’m not even talking about the mental wounds. People are desperate. They don’t know anymore what to do.”

Fate of Gaza’s detainees unknown, says prisoners’ rights group

According to Amani Sarhaneh of the Palestinian Prisoners Society, people being detained in the besieged coastal enclave are subject to forced disappearance by the Israeli military. “Israel refuses to give out any information about the whereabouts or fate of the detainees,” Sarahneh told Al Jazeera.

She added that released prisoners have spoken of “horrific torture practices carried out against them during their detention in Israeli camps”.

“Since October 7, there has been a radical change in the conditions of detention. Palestinian prisoners are subject to a systematic torture policy, humiliation and abuse,” she said, adding that 10 detainees have died while in prison.

Detainees are also being subject to malnourishment and cell overcrowding. They have had warm clothes and blankets taken away for winter; they are being prevented from taking daily showers; and are not being allowed any family or lawyer visitations, Sarahneh said.

Palestine Red Crescent says it’s concerned for well-being of 7 detained medics

Israeli forces continue to detain seven members of the PRCS teams for the 20th consecutive day, including ambulance crews, anesthesia technicians and a doctor, the organisation says.

“They were arrested during the Israeli occupation’s raid on Al Amal Hospital, and their fate remains unknown at the moment. PRCS expresses its utmost concern for the safety of the detained teams and demands their immediate release,” the organisation adds.

Norwegian Refugee Council director says ‘hundreds of trucks’ stuck outside of Gaza crossings

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, has said that Israel must allow aid trucks into Gaza in order to address the Gaza Strip’s dire humanitarian crisis. Israeli authorities have systematically blocked or delayed large portions of aid, even as health groups warn of looming famine.

“Hundreds of aid trucks wait in line to cross into Gaza at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom [Karem Abu Salem] crossings to a starving civilian population,” Egeland said in a social media post, with a video showing scores of aid trucks lined up. “There has not been a single day we have gotten the needed 500 trucks across. The system is broken and Israel could fix it for the sake of the innocent.”

Strikes reported on Nuseirat camp in central Gaza Strip

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting strikes taking place in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli strikes on a residential area caused a number of casualties. Several have also been wounded.





UN highlights plight of Palestinians forced to live in destroyed buildings

The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees has shared images of 12-year-old Alaa, who has been forced to seek shelter – along with her family – in a demolished building in Rafah. “The place is very dark, and light only enters through narrow openings among the remnants of debris,” she said.

“For the population of Gaza, there is literally nowhere left to go,” the UN agency said.

More than 360,000 homes have been damaged or completely destroyed since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7.



In Gaza, water supply at only 7 percent of pre-October levels

According to Maurizio Martina, the deputy director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), severe restrictions on fuel shipments and the lack of functioning desalination plants are crippling water supplies in the Gaza Strip.

Fuel shortages have also hampered the production and delivery of food and electricity, and seriously harmed the ability of bakeries to produce bread, he said.

Martina added that the collapse of agricultural production in the north is already happening and, in the most likely scenario, will be complete by May. As of February 15, over 46 percent of all cropland in Gaza was assessed to be damaged, he said.

The FAO official also said:

  • More than one-quarter of water wells have been destroyed.
  • An estimated 339 hectares (838 acres) of greenhouses have been destroyed.
  • Many livestock owners report substantial losses – all poultry have likely been slaughtered, and as many as 65 percent of calves and 70 percent of beef cattle are assumed to have died.

Many pregnant women malnourished in Gaza, relief group says

A humanitarian group operating a clinic in the Gaza Strip says 21 percent of the pregnant women it has treated in the last three weeks are suffering from malnutrition. Project Hope, which runs a primary health clinic in the central town of Deir el-Balah, says that 11 percent of the children under the age of five it has treated during the same period are also malnourished.

UN officials say the Israeli war has pushed a quarter of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians to the brink of famine. Project Hope says that “people have reported eating nothing but white bread as fruit, vegetables, and other nutrient-dense foods are nearly impossible to find or too expensive.”

Malnutrition is especially dangerous for pregnant women and newborns, who require additional nutrients.

Journalist says family killed in Israeli bombardment in Gaza City

Motasem A Dalloul, a Palestinian journalist based in Gaza City, has said that his pregnant wife and three-year-old son, along with 20 other people, have been killed in an Israeli bombardment of a residential compound.

On X, he posted a picture of his dead wife, Riham, and son, Abu Baker.

The journalist has been tweeting for days about the lack of food in Gaza City, as well as the lack of humanitarian aid in the northern part of the besieged Gaza Strip.



Israel’s Smotrich presses on with illegal settlement plans despite criticism

The Israeli finance minister has announced the approval of a new illegal settlements in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, and said work would continue on authorising further settlements despite widespread international criticism.

“We will continue the momentum of settlement throughout the country,” Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement.

The move comes just days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said his country considered Jewish settlements in the West Bank to be inconsistent with international law, reverting to a longstanding US position that was overturned by the administration of former President Donald Trump.

Earlier this month, the UK and France also condemned Israel for promoting settlement construction in Palestinian territories and issued sanctions against Israelis accused of committing violent acts against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israel declares West Bank village of Jalboun closed military zone after confrontations

Israeli forces have demolished Palestinian-owned shacks in the village of Jalboun, northeast of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, prompting confrontations that ended with arrests, according to local sources cited by the Wafa news agency. Ibrahim Abu al-Rub, the head of the Jalboun village council, said the Israeli army, accompanied by bulldozers, destroyed a shack belonging to local resident Muhammad Nafi Shalabi.

Intense confrontations between local Palestinians and Israeli forces erupted following the demolition operation. The soldiers later arrested a young man and declared the village a closed military zone, the report said.

The Israeli forces demolished several structures in the same village, including fences, a caravan, electrical equipment and a sheep barn owned by two Palestinian siblings. Another Palestinian was also arrested after passing by in his vehicle.