United Nations (UN) humanitarian aid operations in Gaza were suspended today after Israel issued a new evacuation order late last night for the city of Deir Al-Balah in the central part of the Gaza Strip, a senior UN official said.
He said that the UN is unable to deliver aid today, given the conditions they are in.
"We are not leaving (Gaza) because the people there need us. We are trying to meet the needs of the population, but also the need for the safety of the UN staff," said the unnamed official.
The same source said UN staff on the ground had been ordered to try to find a way to resume work.
(MINE)
Israeli forces have arrested at least 15 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during raids since last night, the Guardian reports.
The occupied West Bank, which Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state along with Gaza, has faced a surge in violence since the war began last year, with a major crackdown by Israeli security forces, which have made thousands of arrests.
At least 40.435 Palestinians have been killed and 93.534 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, Gaza's health ministry said Monday.
The ministry said that 33 Palestinians were killed and 66 wounded in the last 24 hours.
It also said thousands of other dead people were likely buried under the rubble in the enclave.
Israeli evacuation orders have forced many families and patients to leave Al Aqsa Hospital, the main medical facility in Deir Al Balah, where hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people have taken refuge for fear of bombardment, the Guardian reports.
The hospital is located near the area covered by the evacuation order.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said yesterday that an explosion about 250 meters from the MSF-supported Al Aqsa Hospital caused panic.
"Therefore, MSF is considering the possibility of temporarily suspending wound care while trying to maintain emergency medical treatments," the organization said.
Of the approximately 650 patients, only 100 remain in the hospital, seven of whom are in the intensive care unit, according to a statement from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Witnesses and correspondents of Agence France-Presse reported on airstrikes and shelling in Gaza during the night.
Medical workers said an airstrike on a house in Gaza killed at least five people, while two rescue workers told AFP that more victims could be buried in the rubble in the Al Rimal neighborhood.
"There are still victims and body parts under the rubble, mostly women, men and elderly people who were sleeping when the building was hit," said ambulance driver Husein Muhajsen.
According to the Ministry of Health in the enclave, more than 40.000 Palestinians have died in the war.
Israel lost its deterrent power because it failed to predict the time and place of a "limited and controlled" attack by Hezbollah, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani wrote in a post on the X social network.
"The myth of the invincibility of the Israeli army has long since become an empty slogan. The Israeli terrorist army has lost its effective offensive and deterrent power and must now defend itself against strategic strikes," Kanani wrote, according to the Guardian.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deployed 100 fighter jets to target more than 40 targets inside Lebanon over the course of seven hours on Sunday. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group, has launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah downplayed the Israeli airstrikes and portrayed the Hezbollah airstrike, which was designed as revenge for the killing of a top commander last month, as a success.
Attacks by the Israeli army killed at least seven Palestinians today, according to health sources, the Guardian reports. Two people died in Deir Al Balah, two in a school in the Al Nuseirat camp, and three in Rafah, a town near the border with Egypt.
Late last night, Israel issued new orders for the evacuation of Deir Al Balah, a city in the central part of the Gaza Strip. Israel claims that Hamas fighters are operating in the area. The municipality of Deir Al Balah said that Israeli evacuation orders displaced about 250.000 people.
Savasn Abu Afesh told Reuters that she and her children have now been displaced 11 times.
"I left half of my children behind me, near my furniture, and now I am with my younger ones and my daughter, only God can help us... I have no money for transportation, I will walk to area 17 where my family is. I took my children , and three of them were left behind. I have no idea where," she said.
Most of Gaza's 2,3 million residents have been displaced multiple times since the war began. Even in areas designated as safe zones, casualties from Israeli attacks are often reported.
Humanitarian agencies say that the remaining humanitarian zones, which make up a small percentage of the total area of the Gaza Strip, are already overcrowded and cannot receive new arrivals.
Meanwhile, the Arabic BBC analyzed satellite images and found that the waters on parts of the Mediterranean coast of Gaza are starting to turn brown, due to a large sewage spill off the coast of Deir Al Balah.
"This is due to the increase in the number of displaced people, and many have connected their pipes to the rainwater drainage system," Abu Jazan Ismael Sarsur, head of Deir Al Balah's crisis headquarters, told the Arabic BBC.
Frequent Israeli airstrikes have resulted in the collapse of Gaza's wastewater management infrastructure, the UN says, with aid agencies warning that the flow of untreated sewage poses a serious health threat.
The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borelj, will seek sanctions against two far-right Israeli ministers as the EU struggles to save its credibility in the Middle East.
At a meeting of 27 EU foreign ministers on Thursday, Borelj will present arguments for sanctions against Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two far-right ministers whose inflammatory statements and behavior have drawn international condemnation, the Guardian reports.
Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, sparked outrage with a recent visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque, also known as the Temple Mount, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews. The ultra-nationalist minister, who is seeking to derail the truce talks, said he went to pray, breaking the status quo that allows only Muslims to pray, while others can only visit the site.
Ben-Gvir has also repeatedly called for the suspension of aid and fuel supplies to Gaza, a position he reiterated earlier this month.
Smotrich, Israel's finance minister, sparked outrage earlier this month when he said it could be "justified and moral" to starve two million people in Gaza to free the remaining Israeli hostages, who were abducted in the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
As an obvious response to these statements, Borrelj tweeted on August 11: "While the world is calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, Minister Ben-Gvir calls for the suspension of fuel deliveries and aid to civilians. Like Minister Smotrich's ominous statements, this is an incitement to war crimes. Sanctions must be on the agenda of the EU".
A few days later, in response to further attacks by Israeli settlers on a village in the West Bank, Borelj confirmed his intention to propose EU sanctions "against instigators of violence among settlers, including some members of the Israeli government."
Borrelj, who has repeatedly called on the Israeli government to stop the escalation of settler attacks, is expected to ask for sanctions at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Thursday. There will be no formal proposal, and EU officials expect Hungary and the Czech Republic - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's two staunchest allies among EU members - to veto it.
Still, EU sources think it's worth proposing, partly as an attempt to repair the bloc's damaged international credibility over the war between Israel and Gaza.
"The goal is really to condemn the behavior of Israeli ministers and show that the EU is trying to maintain credibility and that we don't have double standards," said one source.
Unlike the war in Ukraine, where the bloc (with the exception of Hungary) has shown considerable unity, views on the conflict between Israel and Gaza have often differed sharply. EU member states voted for, against and abstained on UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza last October and for massive aid deliveries to the area in December.
As well as showing divisions within the EU, the no and abstention votes also put EU countries in a different camp than many countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America, prompting accusations of double standards compared to strong condemnations of the war. Russia vs. Ukraine.
The Guardian states that this is why Borelj is worried about the way the EU is perceived around the world.
Today, about 60 international organizations for the protection of journalists sent an appeal to the European Union (EU) to suspend the agreement with Israel, after almost 11 months of attacks on media freedom and the suffering of journalists in the war with Hamas.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 last year, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken a series of measures "to limit the freedom of the media, which has led to the establishment of a regime of censorship", according to the appeal of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, an organization Human Rights Watch and the European Federation of Journalists.
Those organizations demand from the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borelj, and the trade commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, to suspend the agreement with Israel, which specifically refers to trade.
"Targeted sanctions against those responsible" for violating human rights are also demanded, according to the French press agency.
Since October 7, more than 100 Palestinian journalists, two Israelis and three Lebanese have died in the conflict in Gaza.
(BETA)
Iran is not seeking to increase tensions in the Middle East, its Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told his Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani, adding that its retaliation for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas in Tehran, will be "definitive and calculated".
(Rojters)
In a speech earlier Sunday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah downplayed the Israeli airstrikes and portrayed the Hezbollah airstrike, which was intended to avenge the killing of a top commander last month, as a success.
Nasrallah said that Hezbollah used its Kachusha missiles (320 of them according to official statements) to deter Israel's Iron Dome air defense system from mass drone attacks. He added that all the drones were successfully launched and entered Israeli airspace, but did not say how many reached their targets, the Guardian reports.
Hezbollah's secretary general claimed that the Lebanese Shiite militia decided not to respond to the killing of its commander Fuad Shukr in late July with attacks on Israeli civilians or infrastructure, but to focus exclusively on military targets.
He added that Hezbollah's arsenal of guided missiles had not been used and had not been damaged by Israeli airstrikes, and could be used in the future. The impact of Sunday's attack will be assessed before a decision is made on further actions in retaliation for Shukr.
"If the results do not prove to be sufficient, we will respond another time," Nasrallah said in a televised address.
While Netanyahu and Nasrallah left open the possibility of further exchanges across the Israeli-Lebanese border, Reuters quoted two unnamed diplomats as saying both sides had been in contact to confirm that each considered the exchange "finished" and that neither wanted an escalation of the conflict.
Israel's foreign minister, Izrael Katz, also emphasized that his country does not want a bigger conflict, although "it will act in accordance with the development of the situation on the ground".
Military analysts in Israel believe that some Israeli army generals and Defense Minister Yoav Galant are pushing for further attacks on Hezbollah military positions after Sunday's apparently successful attack.
Galant told the officers that Hezbollah had been thrown off balance by Israel's pre-emptive action minutes before the Lebanese militia were to launch an attack with rockets and drones.
"We destabilized Hezbollah, and their operation failed. Thousands of rockets were destroyed, precision missiles were hit at several points, dozens of drones were destroyed, and in general, it was a very successful result. The enemy planned to launch hundreds of rockets. The preventive action is meant that more than fifty percent, maybe two-thirds of them, were not launched," Galant said, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
He pointed out that Israel is at a "strategic crossroads" between possible negotiated solutions to the conflict in Gaza and the confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
"We must use the negotiations to enable the release of the hostages, and through the release of the hostages, open the possibility of creating a solution in the north, and later, of calming the region," said the defense minister.
Meanwhile, he added that Israel "acts militarily and prepares as if there will be no solution, and we are ready at any moment for a war in the north, whatever comes".
"However, this is not the path we prefer, and we are still giving a chance to the possibility that this can be resolved through an agreement," concluded Galant.
Talks on a hostage exchange and ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will continue in the coming days at lower levels, after a round of high-level talks in Cairo ended on Sunday without a final agreement.
As AP reports, an unnamed American official said that there were no results from the talks in Cairo that were supposed to lead to a ceasefire and an agreement on hostages, in order to at least temporarily end the ten-month war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
A US official said lower-level "working teams" would remain in Cairo to meet with mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt in hopes of resolving remaining differences.
According to him, the round of talks that took place from Thursday to Sunday in Cairo was "constructive".
CIA representatives William Burns and David Barneu, the head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, took part in the talks, while the Hamas delegation was informed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, because that militant movement did not directly participate in the negotiations.
(MINE)
The Palestinian radical movement Hamas said on Sunday it rejected new Israeli terms set out in Gaza ceasefire talks, casting further doubt on the chances of progress in the latest US-backed effort to end the 10-month war.
Months of talks have failed to produce an agreement to end Israel's devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip or to free the remaining hostages taken by Hamas - considered a terrorist organization by the US and the EU - in the group's October 7 attack on Israel that started the war.
The main points of contention in the ongoing talks brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar include Israel's presence in the so-called Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow 14,5 kilometer strip of territory along the Gaza Strip's southern border with Egypt.
Hamas said Israel had dropped its commitment to withdraw troops from the corridor and outlined other new conditions, including vetting displaced Palestinians on their return to the most populated northern part of the enclave when the truce begins.
"We will not accept talks about withdrawing from what we agreed on July 2 or new terms," Hamas official Osama Hamdan told the group's Al-Aqsa television on Sunday.
In July, Hamas accepted a US proposal to begin talks on the release of Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, 16 days after the first phase of an agreement to end the war in Gaza, a senior Hamas source told Reuters.
Hamdan also said that Hamas had submitted its response to the latest proposal to mediators, saying US talk of an imminent deal was a lie.
A Hamas delegation left Cairo on Sunday after talks with mediators, senior official Izat El-Reshik said, adding that the group reiterated its demand that any agreement must include a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
More than 7 people were killed in Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip after the Hamas attack on October 40.000, according to local health authorities under the control of Hamas.
(Radio Free Europe)
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