Main events on April 23rd
- Israeli attacks on schools and tent shelters have killed at least 40 people and injured more than 100 across Gaza over the past day, including a strike on the Yaffa School in Gaza city, which set fire to tent shelters and classrooms housing forcibly displaced families.
- Another Israeli missile struck the Durra Children’s Hospital in Gaza City, damaging the intensive care unit and destroying the solar panel system feeding it power, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
- Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has claimed top US Republican lawmakers support bombing “food and aid depots” in Gaza.
- In a joint statement, the German, French and British foreign ministers called on Israel to adhere to international law by allowing the unhindered passage of aid into Gaza.
- The latest round of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas are continuing in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, with Arab mediators reportedly tabling a new five-to-seven-year truce.
- Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has called on Hamas to lay down its arms, turn itself into a political party, and hand over the running of Gaza to the PA.
Gaza Civil Defence unable to recover victims after Israel destroyed rescue machinery
The Gaza Strip is witnessing more Israeli escalation. In fact, this has been ongoing since dawn today as Palestinian towns and villages have come under very extensive Israeli bombardment.
The concentration has been on targeting civilian gatherings. Elsewhere, it’s pretty much focused on targeting schools and residential homes.
There are growing challenges faced by Gaza’s civil defence crews in order to deal with these attacks and recover victims from underneath the areas that have been widely destroyed.
This is due to chronic shortages of civil equipment and the destruction of heavy machinery that has been destroyed in the latest Israeli barrage of attacks on the Strip.
All calculated by Israel. The official death toll only counts bodies that get delivered at hospitals. Since Israel ran out of hospitals and ambulances to bomb while new 'collection points' keep popping up with field hospitals, destroy the rescue equipment instead. Bodies that remain under the rubble can't be counted...
Gaza’s children at ‘most severe stages of malnutrition’: Hospital director
That warning was issued by Dr Ahmed al-Farra, director of the al-Tahrir Hospital in the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza, who said medical treatment of children in Gaza “experiencing the most severe stages of malnutrition” is hampered by a shortage of medicine and infant formula.
A Gaza Health Ministry statement on the hospital director’s warning also featured photographs of an emaciated Palestinian child, Osama al-Raqab, who the ministry said “epitomises the suffering of children in Gaza due to the lack of proper nutrition and drinking water”.
“The Gaza Strip is experiencing stage five of malnutrition, the most severe stage according to the World Health Organization,” the ministry said. “The lack of adequate nutrition and medications for pregnant mothers seriously impacts newborns, especially premature babies,” it said.
Israel’s “continued blockade of food and medicine supplies indicates that children in the Gaza Strip are facing a dangerous and catastrophic situation”, the ministry added.
Osama Kamal al-Raqab being treated for malnutrition in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on April 14
