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EXPLANER
Israel confirms flooding of tunnels with seawater, UN mobilizes to resume funding of UNRWA.
Here’s how things go on Wednesday January 31, 2024:
Latest updates
- The Israeli army confirmed on Tuesday that it had been flooding Gaza tunnels with seawater for several weeks.
- A Hamas official told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday that the group was studying a new three-stage truce proposal with Israel.
- At least half of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed since October 7, according to an analysis verified Tuesday by the BBC.
- Israel reiterated new evacuation orders for western neighborhoods of Gaza City, where 88,000 Palestinians were living in shelters, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said in a statement on Monday. report.
Human impact and fighting
- US Central Command (CENTCOM) said a US warship shot down a Houthi anti-ship cruise missile in the Red Sea on Tuesday.
- US-based think tanks the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) said on Wednesday that Palestinian armed groups are likely in the early stages of rebuilding their military and governance capabilities, only in the north of the Gaza Strip. . Their assessment adds that Hamas is not necessarily preparing for an offensive campaign as Western media suggests.
- The Israeli military announced Wednesday that three soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza, while five others were seriously injured.
- The fate of an ambulance crew and a six-year-old girl they tried to save from a car bombed by the Israeli army in Gaza City remains “unknown”, the Crescent Society said on Tuesday -Palestinian Red (PRCS).
“Collapse” of the aid system in Gaza
- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on major donors to resume funding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), during a closed-door meeting of 35 countries, reported The Times of Israel.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes the immediate closure of UNRWA because he fears it could cause a “humanitarian catastrophe,” a senior government official said Tuesday, according to the Times of Israel.
- Martin Griffiths, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned in a statement on Tuesday that suspending funding to UNRWA would “lead to the collapse” of the aid system in the Gaza Strip.
- The United States has “contacted the Israeli government to obtain more information” about allegations made by Israel against 12 UNRWA personnel involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks, the United States told reporters on Tuesday. Washington Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
- In an article published Wednesday on , whose actions “plausibly constitute” genocide.
Diplomacy
- The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to meet at 11 a.m. New York time (4 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday to discuss the International Court of Justice’s interim ruling on Israel’s war in Gaza.
- The UN human rights office issued a statement on Tuesday calling the “planned extrajudicial execution” of three Palestinian men at Ibn Sina Hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin “unlawful”.
- The Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah group in Iraq said in a statement Tuesday that it had suspended all military operations against U.S. forces in the region to avoid “embarrassment of the Iraqi government.”
