GAZA/JERUSALEM: A group of 28 prematurely born babies evacuated from Gaza’s biggest hospital were taken into Egypt for urgent treatment on Monday, while Palestinian authorities and the WHO said 12 people were killed at another Gaza hospital encircled by Israeli tanks.
The newborns had been in north Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital, where several others died after their incubators were knocked out amid a collapse of medical services during Israel’s military assault on Gaza City.
Israeli forces seized Shifa last week to search for what they said was a Hamas tunnel network built underneath. Hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced people left Shifa at the weekend, with doctors saying they were ejected by troops and Israel saying the departures were voluntary.
Live footage aired by Egypt’s Al Qahera TV showed medical staff carefully lifting infants from inside an ambulance and placing them in mobile incubators, which were then wheeled across a car park toward other ambulances.
The babies were transported on Sunday to a hospital in Rafah, on the southern border of Hamas-ruled Gaza, so their condition could be stabilized ahead of transfer to Egypt. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said 12 had been flown on to Cairo.
All of the evacuated babies were “fighting serious infections,” a WHO spokesperson said.
Eight infants have died since doctors at Shifa originally raised an international alarm this month about 39 premature babies at risk from a lack of infection control, clean water and medicines in the neo-natal ward.
12 DEAD IN HOSPITAL RINGED BY ISRAELI TANKS
At the Indonesian Hospital, funded by Jakarta, Gaza’s health ministry said at least 12 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded by firing into the complex encircled by Israeli tanks.
Health officials said 700 patients along with staff were under Israeli fire.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said the facility in the northeast Gaza town of Beit Lahia had been hit by artillery rounds. Hospital staff denied there were any armed militants on the premises.
WHO chief Tedros said he was “appalled” by the attack that he too said had killed 12 people, including patients, citing unspecified reports.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said troops had fired back at fighters in the hospital while taking “numerous measures to minimize harm” to non-combatants.
“Overnight, terrorists opened fire from within the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza toward IDF troops operating outside the hospital,” the IDF told Reuters. “In response, IDF troops directly targeted the specific source of enemy fire. No shells were fired toward the hospital.”
Like all other health facilities in the northern half of Gaza, the Indonesian Hospital has largely ceased operations but is still sheltering patients, staff and displaced residents.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of the north, but thousands of civilians remain. Food, fuel, medicines and water have been running out across the enclave under Israel’s six-week-old siege.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said its clinic in Gaza City also came under fire on Monday.
In the south, where hundreds of thousands of Gazans who fled the north of the enclave are sheltering, at least 14 Palestinians were killed in two Israeli strikes on houses in Rafah, according to Gaza health authorities.
At least five people were killed and 10 wounded when an Israeli air strike hit an apartment unit in Khan Younis, at the southern end of the strip, according to medical sources at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
HEAVY FIGHTING AROUND MAJOR REFUGEE CAMP
Witnesses also reported bouts of heavy fighting between Hamas gunmen and Israeli forces trying to advance into north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, home to 100,000 people and, according to Israel, a significant militant stronghold.
Repeated Israeli bombardment of Jabalia, an urban extension of Gaza City that grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, has killed scores of civilians, Palestinian medics say.
The Israeli military issued a statement with video of air strikes and troops going house-to-house in Gaza, saying they killed three Hamas company commanders and a squad of Palestinian fighters, without giving specific locations.
Hamas meanwhile said on its Telegram account that it had launched a barrage of missiles toward Tel Aviv. Witnesses also reported rockets being fired at central Israel.
Despite continued fighting, US and Israeli officials said a Qatari-mediated deal was edging closer to free some hostages.
US President Joe Biden said he believed a deal was near.
About 240 hostages were taken during a deadly cross-border rampage into Israel by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, which prompted Israel to invade the Palestinian territory to target Hamas. About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the Hamas assault, according to Israeli tallies, the deadliest day in Israel’s 75-year-old history.
Since then at least 13,300 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 5,600 children and 3,550 women, by unrelenting Israeli bombardment.
The United Nations says two thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been made homeless.
“We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I am Secretary-General,” UN chief Antonio Guterres, who took office on Jan. 1, 2017, told reporters on Monday.
Another 20,000 Gazans, including increasing numbers of unaccompanied children, journeyed from the north to south, mainly by donkey cart or bus or on foot, on Sunday, and some 900,000 displaced people are now in UN shelters, the UN Humanitarian Office (OCHA) said in an update on Monday.
Thousands more displaced people were sleeping against the walls of shelters in the south, out in the open, with an average of one shower for 700 people and one toilet for 150, OCHA said.
Premature Gaza babies evacuated to Egypt as Israeli tanks encircle second hospital
https://arab.news/zuum9
Premature Gaza babies evacuated to Egypt as Israeli tanks encircle second hospital
- Incubators were knocked out amid a collapse of medical services during Israel’s military assault on Gaza City
- Israeli forces seized Shifa last week to search for what they said was Hamas tunnel network built underneath
Iran says it sent a capsule with animals into orbit as it prepares for human missions
A report by the official IRNA news agency quoted Telecommunications Minister Isa Zarepour as saying the capsule was launched 130 kilometers (80 miles) into orbit.
Zarepour said the launch of the 500-kilogram (1,000-pound) capsule is aimed at sending Iranian astronauts to space in coming years. He did not say what kind of animals were in the capsule.
State TV showed footage of a rocket named Salman carrying the capsule into space.
Iran occasionally announces successful launches of satellites and other space crafts. In September, Iran said it sent a data-collecting satellite into space. In 2013, Iran said it sent a monkey into space and returned it successfully.
It says its satellite program is for scientific research and other civilian applications. The US and other Western countries have long been suspicious of the program because the same technology can be used to develop long-range missiles.
Iran Revolutionary Guards seize two vessels smuggling 4.5 million liters of fuel — Tasnim
DUBAI: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Navy have seized two vessels smuggling 4.5 million liters of fuel, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday.
Tasnim said 34 foreign crew have been detained by the Guards in the operation.
Iran, which has some of the world’s cheapest fuel prices due to heavy subsidies and the plunge in the value of its national currency, has been fighting rampant fuel smuggling by land to neighboring countries and by sea to Gulf Arab states.
Israel reviewing strike that harmed Lebanese troops, army says
- Lebanese army say the soldier, a sergeant, was killed when an army position was shelled by Israel on Tuesday
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said on Wednesday it was reviewing a strike that harmed Lebanese troops in south Lebanon, an apparent reference to Israeli shelling that killed a Lebanese soldier and wounded three others the previous day.
“The Lebanese Armed Forces were not the target of the strike. The IDF expresses regret over the incident. The incident is under review,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Israel and the heavily armed Lebanese group Hezbollah have been exchanging fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border since the start of the war between the Palestinian group Hamas and Israel on Oct. 7.
The Lebanese army said the soldier, a sergeant, was killed when an army position was shelled by Israel on Tuesday.
The Israeli army said its soldiers had acted in “self defense to eliminate an imminent threat that had been identified from Lebanon” from a “known launch area and observation point” used by Hezbollah.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon UNIFIL noted in a statement on Tuesday it was the first Lebanese army soldier killed during the hostilities, and that the Lebanese army had not engaged in conflict with Israel.
The Gaza Strip: Tiny, cramped and as densely populated as London
- Gaza has a population density of about 5,500 per square kilometer
GAZA: The war between Israel and Hamas has seen fierce Israeli bombardment that has flattened broad swaths of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
And all that is happening in a tiny, densely populated coastal enclave.
Gaza is tucked among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. The strip is 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by some 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide. It has 2.3 million people living in an area of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), according to the CIA Factbook.
That’s about the same land size as Detroit, a city that has a population of 620,000, according to the US Census Bureau. It’s about twice the size of Washington and 3½ times the size of Paris.
Gaza has a population density of about 14,000 people per square mile (5,500 per square kilometer). That’s about the same as London, a city brimming with high-rise buildings, but also many parks. Gaza has few open spaces, especially in its cities, due to lack of planning and urban sprawl.
Gaza’s density is even tighter in its urban cores like Gaza City or Khan Younis, where tens of thousands are packed into cramped neighborhoods and where density rates become more comparable to certain cities in highly populated Asia.
An Israeli-Egyptian blockade, imposed after the Hamas militant group seized power in 2007, has greatly restricted movement in and out of Gaza, adding to the sense of overcrowding.
‘Living dead’: Tunisian villages suffer drought, climate change
- About 300,000 of Tunisia’s 12 million people have no drinking water in their homes, according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights
OULED OMAR, Tunisia: Tunisian villager Ounissa Mazhoud ties two empty jerry cans to a donkey and cautiously descends a stony hill toward the last local source of water.
The North African country, in its fourth year of drought, is grappling with its worst water scarcity in years.
Mazhoud — like other women in the remote village of Ouled Omar, 180 kilometers (110 miles) southwest of the capital Tunis — wakes up every morning with one thing on her mind: finding water.
“We are the living dead ... forgotten by everyone,” said Mazhoud, 57, whose region was once one of Tunisia’s most fertile, known for its wheat fields and Aleppo pines.
“We have no roads, no water, no aid, no decent housing, and we own nothing,” she said, adding that the closest source of water is a river about an hour’s arduous walk away.
Providing water for their families, she said, means that “our backs, heads and knees hurt, because we labor from dawn to dusk.”
The World Bank predicts that by 2030 the Middle East and North Africa region will fall below the “absolute water scarcity” threshold of 500 cubic meters yearly per person.
Tunisia, already the 33rd most water-stressed country according to the World Resources Institute, has dropped to 450 cubic meters per inhabitant.
Its dams — the primary source for drinking water and irrigating crops — are filled at just 22 percent capacity, despite brief showers recently, according to official figures.
Some 20 dams have already gone out of service, mostly in the most arid south.
Last spring, Tunisian authorities introduced water rationing to limit household use even in major cities.
But in remote villages, where water scarcity impacts crucial farming and livestock, the issue takes on even greater weight.
Ounissa’s 65-year-old husband, Mahmoud Mazhoud, said their village has become unable to support livestock, forcing him to sell half of his cow herd so he could afford to keep the rest alive.
Ouled Omar is home to 22 families who share the only remaining spring.
They say it yields only about 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of water per day in total, but that it is undrinkable.
Ramzi Sebtaoui, a stockbreeder in his thirties, brings water to his family every day by driving to the closest source, some 20 kilometers away in the city of Maktar.
“Two or three years ago, the situation was much better, with many natural sources of water that we could use for livestock,” he said.
“Today, due to climate change and other factors, almost all sources have dried up, and the roads are destroyed.”
Last week, Ouled Omar residents traveled almost 50 kilometers to the city of Siliana to protest outside governorate offices, demanding a paved road and access to clean water.
“They don’t have a source of drinking water, not even taps,” Houda Mazhoud, a researcher who has been advocating for Ouled Omar’s access to clean water for years, told AFP.
“As a result, they use a natural source. But with climate change, it’s starting to disappear.”
The only road that leads to the village is decrepit and hasn’t been paved in decades, and residents say this only deepens their sense of isolation.
Some villagers have felt pushed to move to urban areas or abroad.
About 300,000 of Tunisia’s 12 million people have no drinking water in their homes, according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights.
Ounissa’s cousin, Djamila Mazhoud, 60, said her son and two daughters had all left in search of better lives.
“We educated our children so that when we grow old, they take care of us, but they couldn’t,” she said.
“People are either unemployed or eaten by the fish in the sea,” she added, using a common phrase for migrants who attempt the dangerous sea voyages for Europe.
Entire families have already left the village, said Djamila.
“Their houses remain empty,” she said, explaining that elderly people feel they have no choice but to follow their sons and daughters.
“Can an 80-year-old go to the river to get water?“
