JERUSALEM: In a small hotel near the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, where she received radiation therapy for breast cancer, Palestinian Rim Abu Obeida waits anxiously.
She is among a group of Palestinian patients living in limbo while a top Israeli court weighs whether they can be sent back to war-torn Gaza now that their treatment is completed.
Like dozens of Gazans before the Israel-Hamas war erupted, she was granted permission to leave the territory for care because hospitals in the Gaza Strip did not have the necessary equipment.
“This week, we were suddenly told we had to return to Gaza. This is sending us to hell, to death!” Abu Obeida said.
If she is forced to leave, she will not have much to return to — her house in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis has been destroyed in Israeli’s offensive against Hamas.
The roughly 20 patients from Gaza, most of them battling cancer, have been receiving treatment in Tel Aviv and East Jerusalem for the past six months.
COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that governs civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, said this week that because the patients “don’t need any continued medical treatment, they are being returned to the Gaza Strip.”
But at the last minute, the Israeli Supreme Court, responding to a petition by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights, suspended COGAT’s order.
The court is expected to rule on the case, though the timeline is unclear. The government has until April 21 to file its arguments.
In the next room, along with Abu Obeida, Manal Abu Shaaban was busy stashing food into her bags.
“I have rice, sugar, everything they are deprived of there. I hope they won’t stop me from bringing them in,” she said.
Abu Shaaban, a breast cancer patient like Abu Obeida, said she was not opposed to returning.
Still, she knew the security situation meant she would be unable to reach her home in Gaza City, in the besieged territory’s north.
“I want to go back. But to my home, in my house! Not in Rafah, in the south, where they want us to go, I don’t know anyone there,” she said.
Large swaths of the north have been flattened by Israeli bombardment, and a UN-backed assessment said the area faces famine by May unless substantially more aid reaches it.
Meanwhile, in Gaza’s south, up to 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are crammed into Rafah and live under the threat of a full-scale Israeli ground offensive.
Asked about the fate of the patients who face being returned to Gaza, Augusta Victoria Hospital director Fadi Mizyed paused for a few seconds.
“I don’t know. They will go back in a war zone, they will be at risk, they will be living in catastrophic conditions,” he said.
“The situation in Gaza is beyond description, with no guaranteed healthcare services that can do what is needed for any cancer patients.”
“We said we don’t think it’s the right thing to do but at the end of the day it’s not our call,” he added.
Cancer patients fear Israel move to force them back to Rafah
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Cancer patients fear Israel move to force them back to Rafah
- The roughly 20 patients from Gaza, most of them battling cancer, have been receiving treatment in Tel Aviv and East Jerusalem for the past six months
- I want to go back. But to my home, in my house! Not in Rafah, in the south, where they want us to go. I don’t know anyone there
Israel says it has launched ‘broad wave’ of strikes on Iran, as Tehran widens its response across the region
- US military says 17 Iranian navy ships destroyed, struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran thus far
- US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran: Iranian Red Crescent
JERUSALEM/DUBAI/TEHRAN: Israel early Wednesday launched new attacks on Iran as the US military said it has hit nearly 2,000 targets inside the Islamic republic, which tried to impose a cost by expanding a missile and drone barrage across the region.
With global energy prices on the rise, President Donald Trump said the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint into the Gulf that Iran has threatened to seal off.
Israel’s military said it launched a “broad wave of strikes” after midnight across Iran, which in the hours before had launched three separate missile barrages at Israel, causing mild injuries to a woman in Tel Aviv.
The US military has destroyed 17 Iranian ships, including a submarine, and struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran, the commander of the US Central Command said on Tuesday.
“Today, there is not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman,” US Central Command’s Brad Cooper said in a video posted to X.
Cooper said the US military has “severely degraded Iran’s air defenses” and taken out hundreds of ballistic missiles, launchers and drones.
The video showed missiles and jets launching from US ships, and targets exploding on the ground.
Cooper noted that Iran has launched over 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones in retaliation.
But he said the US is “hunting” Iran’s last remaining mobile ballistic missile launchers to eliminate their “lingering launch capability.”
Cooper said the operation has involved more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and “more capability is on the way.”
“We’ve just begun,” Cooper said, adding that the US military is targeting “all the things that can shoot at us.”
“These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest buildup by the US in the Middle East in a generation,” he said in the video message, describing the first day’s barrage as bigger than the so-called “shock and awe” against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
Iran‘s response
The US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, a toll that could not be independently confirmed.
Iran vowed to inflict a heavy price in retaliation. Drones struck adjacent the US consulate in Dubai, starting a fire but inflicting no casualties, and against the US military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar.
The attacks came a day after strikes on the US embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait City and on a US air base in Bahrain.
“We are saying to the enemy that if it decides to hit our main centers, we will hit all economic centers in the region,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard General Ebrahim Jabbari said.
Iranian attacks have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens in the Gulf region, according to various reports quoting local authorities.
Among the latest death was an 11-year-old girl who was killed after shrapnel fell in a residential area in Kuwait City, health authorities said Wednesday.
The Kuwait army said in a statement the shrapnel fell over a house and left casualties while forces were intercepting “several hostile aerial targets” over the country.
The Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the child died of her wounds at the hospital.
The child’s mother and three other relatives were injured and being treated at the hospital, it said.
Vessel hit in Gulf of Oman
A vessel was hit by a projectile early Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman off the United Arab Emirates, an agency of the UK military said.
There were no reported casualties.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said the vessel was struck 8 miles east of Fujairah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.
The attack damaged the vessel’s steel plating.
No fire or water intake was reported, it said.
Iran hits US embassies
The US State Department said Tuesday it’s preparing military and charter flights for Americans who want to leave the Middle East. Several other countries also arranged evacuation flights for their citizens.
An attack from two drones on the US Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire,” according to the Saudi Arabian Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound.
An Iranian drone struck a parking lot outside the US consulate in Dubai, sparking a small fire, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington. He said all personnel were accounted for.
The United Arab Emirates said it has intercepted the vast majority of more than 1,000 Iranian missile and drone attacks against it.
US embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon said they were closed to the public.
The US State Department ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. And US citizens were urged to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, though many were stranded because of airspace closures.
The US military has confirmed six deaths of American service members.
Four of the American soldiers killed were identified as Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt, Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who received a posthumous promotion in rank. They were assigned to the Iowa-based 103rd Sustainment Command.
Ghost town
In Tehran, residents who have not fled remained shut away in their homes for fear of the US-Israeli bombardment.
The Iranian capital is normally home to around 10 million people, but in recent days “there are so few people that you’d think no one ever lived here,” said Samireh, a 33-year-old nurse.
Authorities had previously urged people to leave the city, and police officers, armed security forces and armored vehicles have been stationed at main junctions, carrying out random checks on vehicles.
In the more upmarket north of Tehran, the meowing of cats and chirping of birds replaced the usual din of traffic jams.
Iranian authorities said a strike on a school in the city of Minab on the first day of the war killed more than 150 people.
Drone downed near Baghdad airport
In Baghdad, a drone was shot down on Wednesday near Baghdad’s international airport, a day after a similar attack on the facility, two security sources told AFP.
“A drone was downed near Baghdad airport, with no casualties or material damage reported,” an Iraqi security source said. Another security source in Baghdad confirmed the incident.
The airport includes a military base that hosts a US diplomatic facility and previously housed US-led coalition troops.
