French "hospital ship" sailed for Egypt to provide aid to Palestinians French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecorny said that a helicopter carrier ship, sent by France, sailed to Egypt to provide medical aid to Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, the Times of Israel reports.
Lekorni pointed out that the ship will serve as a floating hospital with two operating rooms, 40 beds, an X-ray scanner and a laboratory, and that it will mainly be used for emergency treatment of Palestinian children.
"The helicopters will serve to evacuate wounded Palestinians from the Gaza border to the ship for treatment," Lekorni stressed.
(RTS)
Hospitals in southern Gaza are overcrowded. In many, there is no water, electricity, medicine. Terrible conditions are worsened by heavy rain and wind, reports RTS.
"Where should we go, someone tell us. They are threatening us with an extension of the ground offensive, we don't know what awaits us and what our fate is," says a Palestinian woman in Khan Younis.
"The bloodshed does not stop. The green light has been given to the enemy to exterminate everyone, without distinguishing between a child, a woman, a civilian or an armed man," said another resident.
"The humanitarian situation is worsening in Rafah as well. People are waiting in lines for the shops to open, even though they are empty.
"The situation is critical, we don't know when help will arrive. We are afraid that we will soon be threatened with hunger," said a resident of Rafa.
Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Galant said that Hezbollah has fired more than 1.000 missiles at his country since the start of the conflict, pointing out that Iran is the "root of hostility", reports the Times of Israel.
"Iran is the root of hostility and aggression against Israel. The war is being waged on several fronts, although its intensity is strongest in Gaza," Galant claims.
(RTS)
Israel released a video today of what it described as a tunnel dug by Palestinian militants under the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, the focus of its search-and-destroy missions against Hamas in a war now in its seventh week, reports Reuters.
While admitting to having a network of hundreds of kilometers of secret tunnels, bunkers and access shafts throughout the Palestinian enclave, Hamas has denied that they are in civilian infrastructure such as hospitals.
In the latest report on operations at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the Israeli military said its engineers had discovered a 10-meter-deep tunnel leading 55 meters to a blast-proof door.
"The terrorist organization Hamas uses this type of door to prevent Israeli forces from entering command centers and underground assets belonging to Hamas," the military said in a statement accompanied by a video showing a narrow passage with an arched concrete roof, ending in a gray door .
The statement did not say what was behind the door. The tunnel was accessed through a shaft discovered in a shed inside the Šifa complex in which ammunition was stored, according to the announcement.
At least 13.000 Palestinians have been killed and 30.000 injured in Gaza since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas on October 7, the government's media office in Gaza announced today, Reuters reports.
At least 5.500 of the dead were children, and 3.500 were women, the statement added.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today that Israel's "defeat" in the war against Hamas in Gaza is a "fact".
The Ayatollah was speaking during a visit to the Revolutionary Guard's aviation development center, during which a new version of Iran's hypersonic ballistic missile, the Fatah II, was unveiled.
"The defeat of the Zionist regime in Gaza is a fact. Penetrating hospitals and homes does not represent victory because victory means the defeat of the other side, which it has not succeeded in so far and will not succeed in the future," said an Iranian official.
He added that Israel's "inability" to defeat Hamas is an indication of "the inability of the United States of America and Western countries."
Khamenei previously said Iran was not involved in Hamas attacks on Israel and pledged to continue supporting the Palestinian territories.
(BETA)
Israel hopes that Hamas could release a significant number of hostages "in the coming days," Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, said in an interview with ABC's "This Week," Reuters reports.
Israel should not launch combat operations against Hamas in southern Gaza until military planners consider the safety of fleeing Palestinian civilians, a White House official said today, Reuters reports.
"In the event that Israel is likely to launch combat operations, including in the south, we believe ... they have the right to do so," White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told CBS' Face the Nation.
"We feel that their operations should not go forward until those people, those additional civilians, are factored into their military planning," Finer said. “We're going to take it straight to them and we're taking it straight to them.
The Israeli attack has reduced parts of the north to rubble, while about two-thirds of Gaza's population of 2,3 million have been displaced to the south.
Gaza's health ministry put the death toll from Israeli bombing at 12.300, including 5.000 children.
Finer called on Israel to learn from its military operations in northern Gaza and provide improved protection for civilians by narrowing the area of active combat and specifying where civilians can seek refuge.
At least 11 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza, health officials in Gaza said, according to Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's son, Yair Netanyahu, said today that failures by the Israeli military, security services and the High Court led to the deadly attacks by Hamas on October 7.
The High Representative of the European Union (EU) for foreign policy and security, Josep Borelj, said that the resolution of the United Nations Security Council (UN) on humanitarian pauses in Gaza must be implemented and called for an immediate end to hostilities.
"The decisions of the Security Council are not just words. They must be implemented," Borelj said today in Doha, at a joint press conference with the Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.
Borelj, as reported by Tanjug, pointed out that the international community must take a stand against violations of international law, and added that the EU is putting pressure on both sides to facilitate an agreement for the release of the hostages.
He called for an immediate and sustained humanitarian pause and additional efforts to protect civilian lives in the Gaza Strip.
(BETA)
The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced today that at least 30 premature babies were evacuated from Al-Shifa Hospital and will be transferred to hospitals in Egypt.
Ministry spokesman Medhat Abbas said in a telephone conversation with AP that the babies were evacuated today.
Representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) visited the hospital on Saturday evening and said 32 babies were among dozens of patients in critical condition at the hospital, which Israeli soldiers entered on Wednesday.
For now, however, the difference in the number of babies is not clear, AP said.
The UN team announced earlier today that 291 patients remained at Al-Shifa Hospital after Israeli soldiers evacuated other patients, employees and displaced Palestinians who had taken refuge there.
The rest, apart from the babies, are in extremely critical condition, injured patients with infected wounds and those with spinal injuries who cannot move.
The tour of the hospital lasted one hour as about 2.500 displaced people, patients who can walk and medical staff left there, the WHO, which led the mission, said.
25 healthcare workers stayed with the patients.
Israel has long claimed that Hamas has a command post in and under the hospital.
The hospital has become a key target of the war against the Islamic extremist organization ruling Gaza, after the attack on southern Israel six weeks ago. Hamas and hospital employees have denied Israel's accusations.
Israeli soldiers are in the hospital, they have been searching it for days and they say they have found weapons. The journalists were shown the entrance to the tunnel.
The AP could not independently confirm what the Israeli side says was found.
Yesterday's mass exodus from the hospital was portrayed by Israel as voluntary, but the WHO said the evacuation was ordered and those who remained described it as a forced exodus.
(BETA)
President of the United States of America (USA) Joseph Biden called for the reunification of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the future under a "revitalized Palestinian Authority" and threatened sanctions against "extremist" Jewish settlers who attack Palestinians in the West Bank.
He wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Post that the two Palestinian territories should be united under the same "governance structure" when Hamas is expelled from Gaza, which it has ruled since 2007, following an Israeli military operation.
The White House said it "continues to work hard" to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas on the release of the hostages and a pause in the fighting.
"We haven't reached an agreement yet, but we continue to work hard" in that direction, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council of the White House, Adrienne Watson, stated last night on the X social network.
With this statement, she denied information from the Washington Post newspaper, according to which an agreement was reached between the warring parties, which foresees the release of the hostages and a five-day pause in the fighting.
(BETA)
Fifteen Palestinians were killed early this morning in an Israeli aerial bombardment of the central and southern Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency VAFA reported, reports Reuters.
Thirteen people were killed in an attack on a house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, while a woman and her child were killed in the southern city of Khan Yunis, VAFA said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has described Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a "death zone" after visiting the complex, the BBC reports.
A joint United Nations (UN) team led by the WHO was assessing the hospital one hour after the Israeli army occupied and evacuated it.
The team said it saw evidence of shelling and gunfire and spotted a mass grave at the entrance to the hospital.
They were told that it contained the remains of 80 people.
Following an evacuation order issued by the Israeli military, 300 critically ill patients remain at Al-Shifa - formerly the largest and most advanced hospital in Gaza.
The WHO said it was trying to organize an emergency evacuation of the remaining patients and staff to other facilities in Gaza and reiterated calls for a ceasefire.
Israel, the United States of America (US) and the Palestinian movement Hamas have reached a tentative agreement to release dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the agreement. Reuters agency.
However, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US officials said no deal had yet been reached.
The release of the hostages could begin in the next few days, unless there is a last-minute hitch, according to people familiar with the detailed six-page agreement.
The report comes as Israel appears to be preparing to expand its offensive against Hamas militants into southern Gaza after airstrikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians said to be hiding in two schools.
Under the agreement, all sides will freeze combat operations for at least five days, while 50 or more hostages are released in batches every 24 hours, the Post reported.
Hamas took about 240 hostages during its rampage in Israel on October 7 that killed 1.200 people.
The pause is also intended to allow for a significant amount of humanitarian aid, the newspaper said, adding that the draft agreement was drawn up during weeks of talks in Qatar.
But Netanyahu said at a press conference on Saturday evening: "Regarding the hostages, there are many unsubstantiated rumors, many incorrect reports. I would like to be clear: so far there has been no agreement. But I want to promise: when there is something to say – we will inform you about it".
A White House spokesman also said that Israel and Hamas have not yet reached an agreement on a temporary ceasefire, adding that the US continues to work towards an agreement. Another US official also said no deal had been reached.
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