Gaza Turmoil
Live Reporting
Palestinian girl dies of malnutrition: Report
Citing a health official, the Reuters news agency is reporting that the girl died overnight in Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital.
She is among dozens of children to die from starvation or dehydration during the war, including at least four others this week.
Many more could suffer the same fate as one in five Palestinians in Gaza face “catastrophic food insecurity”, according to the UN’s hunger monitoring system.
Palestinians rush to fix water tanks damaged by war
Repair workers in Gaza are being inundated with requests to fix rooftop water tanks, often riddled by Israeli bullets or bomb shrapnel.
“Before the war … we used to fix only one or two water tanks every month, but now we get dozens due to the occupation [Israeli forces] bombing of homes,” Muhammad Bashir, a repairman in Deir el-Balah, told AFP.
“Most of the tanks we get are damaged by drone fire,” he added.
The tanks, which are filled up by water trucks or pump water from domestic wells, are critical for families during the war, when much of the enclave’s main water infrastructure is wrecked.
Palestinians rush to fix water tanks damaged by war
Repair workers in Gaza are being inundated with requests to fix rooftop water tanks, often riddled by Israeli bullets or bomb shrapnel.
“Before the war … we used to fix only one or two water tanks every month, but now we get dozens due to the occupation [Israeli forces] bombing of homes,” Muhammad Bashir, a repairman in Deir el-Balah, told AFP.
“Most of the tanks we get are damaged by drone fire,” he added.
The tanks, which are filled up by water trucks or pump water from domestic wells, are critical for families during the war, when much of the enclave’s main water infrastructure is wrecked.
Twenty-one Palestinian children with cancer to get treatment abroad: Gaza ministry
Gaza’s Ministry of Health has said that a children’s relief organisation in the US cooperated with the World Health Organization to coordinate the exit from the besieged enclave of 21 Palestinian children with cancer.
More than 25,000 children need treatment abroad, it added.
Failure to address day-after in Gaza could keep Hamas in power: Israel’s ex-security official
Eyal Hulata, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, has criticised the Israeli government for failing to develop a post-war plan for Gaza after nearly nine months of fighting.
“This is one of the biggest failures, because the actual result is the gradual return of Hamas to control the Gaza Strip,” Hulata told Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.
Netanyahu has repeatedly promised to continue the war into Hamas is destroyed, even though the military spokesman has said entirely eliminating the group is impossible.
Rescue missions ‘may stop at any moment’: Gaza’s Civil Defence
The Civil Defence in Gaza has issued a statement, warning that it is running out of fuel and its rescue missions “may stop at any moment”.
It said on its Telegram channel that rescue crews carried out several missions this morning alone, involving recovering bodies and survivors from four homes attacked in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood, as well as two separate houses in the Shujayea area.
“Our crews cannot deal with the huge number of targets while running out of fuel,” its statement said.
“The reality of the health system in the northern Gaza Strip is tragic as the aggression continues.”
Israeli military says warplanes attacked Khan Younis school
The Israeli military has said that its fighter jets attacked the Al Hasna school in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The military did not say if there were casualties resulting from the attack, but claimed “precise weaponry” was used.
“The school served as the headquarters of the terrorist organization Hamas,” the military wrote in a post on X, without providing any evidence to support its allegations.
Israeli military carries out arrests across the occupied West Bank
The Israeli military has arrested four Palestinians in Hebron governorate in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports.
Israeli forces also arrested three people, including a female university student, when they stormed the town of Yatta, south of the city of Hebron, the news agency reports, and another man was arrested in the town of Dura, southwest of Hebron.
The Israeli military has also arrested a man after shooting him in the foot in the Qalandiya refugee camp, and a man has been arrested in Deir Ghassana village, northwest of Ramallah.
Sleepless nights as bugs fill tents where people live surrounded by rubbish, sewage
Palestinians living in camps for displaced people in Gaza have told the AP how they struggle to sleep because their tents are filled with insects.
Abu Shadi Afana, 62, told the AP that small insects stick to his skin when he tries to sleep, and he feels like they are eating his face.
“There is no one to provide us with a tent, food, or drink, and on top of all this, we live in garbage,” he said.
Anwar al-Hurkali, who lives with his family in a tent camp in the central Gazan city of Deir el-Balah, said he can’t sleep for fear of scorpions and rodents. He doesn’t let his children leave their tent, he said, worrying they’ll get sick from pollution and mosquitoes.
Rubbish has been piling up across Gaza after Israel seized control of the territory’s two main landfills, east of the cities of Khan Younis and Gaza City, for the creation of a so-called buffer zone.
US has provided $6.5bn in aid to Israel since October: Report
The US has transferred security-related aid totalling $6.5bn to Israel since October 7, The Washington Post reports, citing an unnamed senior Biden administration official.
The official added that almost half of that military aid was provided last month alone.
“This is a massive, massive undertaking,” the official said.
The Post said the official was disclosing the previously unannounced figures to show the depth of US support for Israel amid accusations from Netanyahu that Washington is withholding arms.
The official said the figures were cited in discussions between senior White House officials and Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington, DC, this week.
Level of destruction in Beit Lahiya ‘defies imagination’ – Gaza’s Civil Defence
Gaza’s civil defence says the levels of destruction after Israel’s bombardment of Beit Lahiya in the north of the strip “defies imagination”.
At least 15 Palestinians were killed in a strike on a home in northern Gaza on Wednesday. Rescue workers spent hours searching the rubble for survivors, with most of the injured being women and children.
Ignoring Israel’s abuses gave ‘licence to harm’ Palestinian children: Envoy
Palestine’s envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour says he regrets it took so long for Israel to be added to the UN secretary-general’s “blacklist” of countries that commit abuses against children in armed conflict.
Speaking to a UN Security Council meeting held to discuss the blacklist, Mansour said that not adding Israel to the list earlier “was an abandonment of Palestinian children”, which Israel took as a “licence to harm them more”.
“It took a genocidal war against our people, an unprecedented crisis for our children, to finally add Israel to the list of shame this year,” he said.
The US State Department has said it does not have the ability to “litigate claims” amid outrage as Israel admits it killed a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) physiotherapist in a drone attack that killed five other people, including three children.
Gaza’s civil defence says Israel’s bombardment of the north has left a level of destruction that “defies imagination” after an Israeli attack on a home in Beit Lahiya killed 15 people.
A displaced Palestinian woman feeds her son milk in a school classroom where she is sheltering in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on June 26 [Mohammed Salem/Reuters]
UN aid chief warns of 'potentially apocalyptic' spread of Gaza war to Lebanon
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - UN aid chief Martin Griffiths on Wednesday said he was concerned by the possible spread of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza to Lebanon and warned of a "potentially apocalyptic" humanitarian situation in the region.
The outgoing United Nations humanitarian chief warned Wednesday that a spread of the Israel-Hamas war to Lebanon would be "potentially apocalyptic", as fighting raged in the southern Gaza Strip.
