Gaza Turmoil
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Israeli army has at least four divisions operating inside Gaza
There is a brigade of Israeli soldiers being redeployed into Gaza. That doesn’t necessarily say much about the number of troops inside because they are often taken out and then redeployed.
But what we do know is that there are at least four divisions operating inside of Gaza and often a division is made up of somewhere between 6,000 to 25,000 troops and there is one operating on the border.
There are six brigade level combat troops operating inside Khan Younis at the moment …They are trying to take control of area because they say Hamas operatives are inside.
There has also been an ongoing battles inside Gaza City. Israelis say they are relatively in control of the north, but what that means we don’t yet know because there has been a lot of fighting and the majority of casualties have come from the north, specifically an area along the border called Beit Lahia.
Gaza’s health system needs an urgent international intervention: Doctor
Dr Hani Hamada, director of operations at the Ministry of Health and Coordinator of Field Hospitals in Gaza, spoke to Al Jazeera about the health system breakdown in the Gaza Strip.
“Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis is now besieged and cannot be reached to provide all services,” Hamada said from the Indonesian field hospital in Rafah. “And in the central area, there is only the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, while the European Hospital is all beds full of cases and waiting lists are high for this purpose.”
He said that about 1.6 million people in Rafah need medical care and health services. He added that cancer patients have had scheduled operations interrupted.
“The situation is very dangerous and needs rapid and urgent intervention, and we appeal to all international institutions and Arab and foreign countries to save the residents of the Gaza Strip from this fierce Israeli attack.”
‘End unlawful killings’ in occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem: UN tells Israel
UN rights chief Volker Turk has said that the human rights situation in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is rapidly deteriorating, citing a new UN report that details Israeli violence in the Palestinian territory.
“The use of military tactics and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force, and the enforcement of broad, arbitrary and discriminatory movement restrictions that affect Palestinians are extremely troubling,” he said in a statement.
The statement also said the UN Human Rights Office had verified the deaths of 300 Palestinians from October 7 to December 27 – including 79 children – in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Of these, Israeli military forces killed at least 291 Palestinians, illegal Israeli settlers killed eight, and one Palestinian was killed either by Israeli troops or settlers.
Prior to October 7, 200 Palestinians had already been killed in the area this year – the highest number in a 10-month period since the UN began keeping records in 2005.
Israel offers new prisoner exchange deal: Report
Israel, via the United States, has proposed a new prisoner exchange deal to mediator Qatar, according to Israel’s Channel 13.
The deal would first see Israel withdraw its troops from densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip and allow far more aid to enter the enclave, the channel reports.
In the second phase, Hamas would release female Israeli captives, including female soldiers and the bodies of dead Israelis, as Israel retreats further into areas to be hashed out via Qatari and US mediation.
The media outlet said Hamas has “so far rejected this proposal” as it does not call for a full ceasefire while hostages are exchanged.
Wrong munition led to high death toll at Maghazi camp: Report
Israel’s military used the wrong type of munition to strike the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza earlier this week, compounding the death toll, the Times of Israel quoted an Israeli military official as saying.
“The type of munition did not match the nature of the attack, causing extensive collateral damage which could have been avoided,” said the official.
At least 90 people were killed late Sunday when Israel struck the small refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, in one of the war’s deadliest attacks.
At least one killed in al-Wafiya neighbourhood, Khan Younis
An Al Jazeera correspondent has reported that at least one Palestinian has been killed and a number of others injured in an Israeli bombing in the al-Wafiya neighbourhood in Khan Younis.
Meanwhile, huge explosions were heard in the northern suburbs of Gaza City amid continued Israeli artillery shelling, a correspondent said.
Israeli army video shows troops seize money from exchange shop
The Israeli army has shared a video of its troops raiding a money exchange shop in the occupied West Bank and drilling into a safe there to confiscate funds.
In a post on social media platform X, the Israeli army said it had begun a joint investigation with other Israeli agencies, including the Shin Bet security service, against Hamas financiers.
Weeks more of intense warfare expected as Israeli forces push south
Israel’s war cabinet has been given approval from the wider security cabinet to move from Stage B of the war, which we are seeing right now, to Stage C.
Stage C is meant to be much more targeted, a move away, critics would say, from mass killing into much more surgical strikes in southern Gaza.
They have to do that simply because so many people have moved into southern Gaza. The sort of war the Israeli military is carrying out now is almost impossible to imagine there and would certainly bring a great deal of international criticism.
It’s up to the war cabinet to decide when to move from Stage B to C, but they say it could be in a number of weeks. It could be well into January until this war changes its face.
Palestinian succumbs to wounds in Nablus
A 21-year-old Palestinian who was shot in the neck by Israeli forces during a raid in Nablus on December 18 has died of his wounds, medical sources have told Al Jazeera.
A total of 314 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since October 7. More than 3,800 people have been injured.
Iran’s supreme leader leads prayers for slain IRGC commander
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei honoured the “tireless struggle” of IRGC commander Sayyed Razi Mousavi, who was killed on December 25 by a suspected Israeli air strike in Syria.
IRGC chief Hossein Salami also spoke at the commander’s funeral and promised retaliation for his killing.
“Our revenge for the martyrdom of Sayyed Razi will be nothing less than the removal of the Zionist regime,” he said. “I am hopeful that soon, God permitting, the great and honourable Palestinian fighters will wipe out the geographical and political name of this evil and fake regime.”
Lavrov calls for end of ‘injustice’ against Palestinians: Report
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stressed the need to break the “vicious cycle of violence” that generations of Palestinians have suffered from and called for an end to the “injustice”.
“It is both unacceptable to justify – let alone encourage – terror attacks, and to respond to them via methods of collective punishment in gross violation of international humanitarian law,” the minister said in an interview for Russian state news agency TASS.
“It is necessary to cut the vicious cycle of violence, to remove the injustice that several generations of Palestinians have been suffering from,” he said. “This is the only way to achieve stabilisation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict area and in the entire Middle Eastern region in general.”
Ten killed near Khan Younis hospital: Palestinian Red Crescent
The Palestinian Red Crescent is reporting that 10 people have been killed and 12 injured in an attack near El Amal City Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
We’ll bring you more on this as we have it.
Urgent: 10 martyrs and 12 wounded in a bombardment near the PRCS Al-Amal Hospital in #KhanYounis.
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) December 28, 2023
This is the third targeting of the hospital surroundings in less than an hour.#AlAmalHospital#KhanYounis #NotATarget pic.twitter.com/dgpPw0r5nz
Israeli forces continue to prepare eastern area for a buffer zone
Along the eastern border, the Israeli military continues its artillery shelling campaign, destroying more residential buildings in the eastern part of Khan Younis, Rafah, as well as the central area and the northern part of Gaza.
It’s all consistent with the efforts of clearing the entire eastern area and preparing it for a buffer zone. It follows the narrative of making that area completely out of service in terms of schools and health facilities and eventually uninhabitable… eventually squeezing people into a small area and finally into expulsion.
The Israeli military stepped up its operations in the central part, ordering people to evacuate in Rafah city where the vast majority of displaced Palestinians and evacuees keep pouring into this small area. It’s an area with an original population of 260,000.
Now we’re looking at 1,350,000 people; it’s running out of space.
‘Piles of body parts’: Gaza’s Maghazi residents find families ‘in pieces’
It has been four days since Gaza’s smallest refugee camp was pounded in yet another series of Israeli air strikes, but Palestinians there are still digging up the bodies of their loved ones from under the rubble.
In one of the deadliest attacks on the Gaza Strip since Israel launched a war on the enclave on October 7, residents including Ashraf al-Haj Ahmed said the assault happened “suddenly” and without prior warning.
Qassam Brigades target Israeli bulldozer in Bureij camp
Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, has announced that it has targeted an Israeli bulldozer with an “Al-Yassin 105” missile in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Confrontations in Bureij between Palestinian fighters and Israeli forces have been continuing since yesterday.
Israel declares raided money exchange shops ‘terrorist organisations’
Israeli forces have designated five Palestinian money exchange shops as “terrorist organisations”, Israel’s Army Radio reports, alleging the shops have been used to transfer funds to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The Army Radio said Israeli forces had raided nine exchange office branches, arrested 20 Palestinians, and seized funds worth some $2.7m.
Drone crashed near Eliad in Golan Heights: Israeli army
The Israeli army announcement came after an Iraqi armed group with links to Hamas claimed to have carried out an attack in the vicinity.
That armed group, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, said it had hit a “vital target” there.
Previously, Israeli media reported a drone that was likely carrying explosives fired from Syria was shot down late Wednesday south of the settlement of Eliad, inflicting no casualties but some material damage.
Under the rubble: The missing in Gaza
Every morning, 51-year-old Yasser Abu Shamala goes to the place where his family’s house once stood in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He starts digging through the rubble with his bare hands, lifting pieces of concrete to try to find members of his family buried under the debris.
Abu Shamala’s family members are among the more than 7,000 people who are reported missing in Gaza, including 4,900 children and women. The missing are believed to be trapped under bombed buildings, according to Hamas officials in Gaza.
As the war continues, finding and rescuing them is becoming increasingly difficult.
Israeli forces ‘seize $2.5 million’ from West Bank exchange shops
We have more information on the overnight Israeli military raids targeting money exchange shops in the West Bank.
In total, Israeli forces “seized about $2.5 million” from three exchange shops in Ramallah and two elsewhere in the West Bank, reports Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan from Ramallah.
In one case, Israeli forces blew up the safe of an exchange shop to confiscate the funds, Khan reports.
Injured Palestinian grandfather comforts grandchild after Israeli strike on Gaza
A video, posted on Instagram by photojournalist Attia Darwish, captures two survivors of an Israeli attack as they sit on a hospital floor after being rescued from the rubble of a destroyed building.
The video, which is trending online, was verified by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking unit, Sanad, and shows a granddaughter being comforted by her injured grandfather.
Several areas of southern Gaza, including Khan Younis and Rafah, were hit by Israeli strikes overnight, resulting in an undetermined number of casualties.
Three more Israeli soldiers killed, three seriously injured in Gaza
A 22-year-old major in Israel’s 77th Battalion, a 24-year-old captain in the 52nd Battalion’s armoured brigade, and a 32-year-old deputy commander in the 198th battalion were killed in fighting in south and central Gaza on Wednesday.
The three seriously wounded received injuries in the same battles as the three deceased soldiers, Israel’s military said.
The UN reports that 22 Israeli soldiers were killed over Tuesday and Wednesday in Gaza, bringing the total number of Israeli forces killed in the Palestinian territory to 162 since the ground invasion began two months ago.
It was not known if the three latest deaths were included in the total death toll reported by the UN.
Dozens arrested in pro-Palestinian protests at two major US airports
(Reuters) – Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked morning traffic on Wednesday around Los Angeles International Airport and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport - two of the nation's busiest - in coast-to-coast demonstrations that ended with dozens of arrests.
Thirty-six people were taken into custody at LAX, where demonstrators became unruly, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
"Protesters threw a police officer to the ground, used construction debris, road signs, tree branches and blocks of concrete to obstruct" a road leading into the airport "while attacking uninvolved passersby in their vehicles," police said in a statement.
Israel attempting to ‘crush’ Palestinian society in the occupied West Bank
Mouin Rabbani, a Middle East analyst and co-editor of the online publication Jadaliyya, said the escalation of violence taking place in the occupied West Bank is part of an agenda of some Israeli officials “to permanently consolidate” Israel’s rule over the Palestinian territory.
“Some of these groups who are are represented within the coalition have an apocalyptic agenda. In other words, from their points of view, the more escalation the better,” Rabbani said in an interview with Al Jazeera.
“They are out to deliberately provoke the Palestinians to seek to create as much conflict as possible,” he said.
“They are even out to provoke the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, because in their view, should they become involved in a conflict, that would then give Israel a pretext to simply eliminate the Palestinian Authority altogether.”
Palestinian fighters using ‘more sophisticated weapons’ in Gaza war: Monitors
Hamas fighters fought Israeli forces during a “six-hour engagement” in the as-Saftawi areas north of Gaza City, used a “thermobaric rocket” for the first time against Israeli special forces, and fired two portable surface-to-air missiles at Israeli helicopters, though failed to shoot them down, war monitors report.
In their latest battlefield assessment from Gaza, the Washington, DC-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) said that Palestinian fighters are using “more sophisticated weapons systems” in battle against Israeli forces.
The ISW and CTP report that Israeli troops on the ground in the north of the Gaza Strip called in “fire support” from Israel’s navy ships deployed off Gaza’s coast as well as air support to help in clashes against Hamas and other armed groups.
In the south of the Strip, Israel’s military reported two weeks of clashes with Palestinian fighters deep in Khan Younis.
Lebanese Hezbollah claimed to have attacked six Israeli targets on Wednesday, according to the monitors, and Israel’s chief of staff Herzi Halevi said that Israel “needs to be ready for an offensive into southern Lebanon, if necessary”.
Also on Wednesday, Israeli army radio reported that an Iranian-made drone launched from Iraq was intercepted over the Mediterranean Sea while apparently en route to Israel’s Karish gas field located in the eastern Mediterranean.
Israeli ‘reinforcements’ sent to southern Gaza as fighting expands
Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that additional reinforcements have been sent into the southern part of the Palestinian territory on the outskirts of Khan Younis.
The army says that they are, quote, “achieving” things there in the form of dismantling Hamas infrastructure and killing Hamas fighters.
The Israeli army has been saying for a few days now that they are expanding their operations into the central part of the territory, near the refugee camps: al-Maghazi refugee camp, al-Bureij refugee camp, and al-Nuseirat refugee camp.
Maghazi refugee camp, just around two days ago, witnessed an air strike that killed at least 106 Palestinians in one instant, making it one of the deadliest nights there since the war began.
Additionally, the Israeli army are saying, for a third night in a row, those camps were hit quite hard as the Israeli army is looking to, quote, “eliminate” any sort of Hamas infrastructure in the central part of the territory.
The Israeli army also says it continuously operates in the northern part of Gaza while trying to deepen their operations in the centre and the south.
Number of injured rises as Israel ramps up raids across occupied West Bank
At least seven people have been shot by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, near the southern city of Hebron.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa said the seven young men were shot and were taken to hospitals and health centres in the area for treatment.
During the raid, Israeli forces also allegedly targeted a number of homes and money exchange and jewellery shops, forcing owners to open the shops, before seizing valuables.
Three other Palestinians were also reported injured in Bani Naim near Hebron and two more in Ramallah.
We will bring you more updates as Israeli forces continue to carry out raids in several areas across the occupied West Bank.
Journalist reported injured amid Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank
A video posted on Telegram and verified by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking unit, Sanad, shows the moment after a journalist was shot in the thigh while covering the clashes between Israeli forces and young Palestinians in the city of Ramallah.
In the video, a man appeared to be limping while rushing through a narrow street as sounds of gunfire were heard in the background.
Messages posted on Telegram identified the journalist as Salman al-Khatib.
Several people have been reported injured across the occupied West Bank as Israeli forces continue their raids targeting a number of locations.
Israel returns 80 bodies to Gaza after confirming they're not hostages
GAZA (Reuters) - Israel has returned the bodies of 80 Palestinians killed in the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Wednesday.
Israel said it was returning the bodies after confirming that they were not Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.
The ministry said the bodies were buried and the authorities recorded details to help with later identification. Gaza authorities were trying to figure out when and where the men were killed and who they were.
Multiple cases of Palestinian civilians killed by Israeli forces in latest UN report
“Intense” fighting is ongoing between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in “most areas” in the Gaza Strip, except the southern area of Rafah, and rockets continue to be fired into Israel while Israel blasts the Palestinian enclave from air, land and sea, the UN reports.
According to the latest situation report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), 195 Palestinian people were reported killed and 325 injured in Israeli attacks between Tuesday and Wednesday.
During the same period, 22 Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza, bringing the death toll for Israeli forces to 162 with almost 900 wounded since the invasion of the Palestinian territory began two months ago.
UNOCHA also reports:
More than 60 people remain missing after an Israeli attack on Tuesday on a residential building near Al-Azhar University in Gaza City.
Six Palestinians were killed on Wednesday by Israeli snipers in the as-Saftawi area of Gaza City.
Also on Wednesday, Israel’s military attacked the UN-run Preparatory School for Girls in the Maghazi refugee camp, killing five people and injuring others.
Relatives of nine Palestinian men killed by Israeli forces have told of their indiscriminate slaying on December 21 when Israelis busted into a room where some 35 people, including many women and children, were sheltering and opened fire.
Most people in #Gaza are displaced. Families are forced to move repeatedly in search of safety. Lack of food and survival items worsen the dire living conditions and increase or amplify health issues.
— OCHA oPt (Palestine) (@ochaopt) December 28, 2023
More in Flash Update #78:
https://t.co/MqtUUZRvgZ pic.twitter.com/caaAPmWXGo
Erdogan resembles Netanyahu with Hitler
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was no different from Adolf Hitler and likened Israel's attacks on Gaza to the treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis.
NATO member Turkey, which supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has criticised Israel's air and ground assault on Gaza, called it a "terror state" and said its leaders must be tried in international courts.
Sharpening his rhetoric, Erdogan said Turkey would welcome academics and scientists facing persecution for their views on the conflict in Gaza, adding Western countries supporting Israel were complicit in what he called war crimes.
Israel pounds central Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians flee
CAIRO/GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli forces pounded central Gaza by land, sea and air on Wednesday (Dec 27) and Palestinian authorities reported dozens more deaths, with the UN health agency saying thousands of people were trying to flee the fighting.
Reflecting Israeli resolve to wipe out Hamas despite international calls for a ceasefire amid a humanitarian crisis, Israel's military chief Herzi Halevi said on Tuesday the war would last many months. There were "no shortcuts in dismantling a terrorist organisation", he said.
Israel also signalled it could step up its response to cross-border attacks from northern neighbour Lebanon, where Hamas ally Hezbollah is based.
