EXPLANER
Israeli forces storm Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, with hundreds of staff and patients trapped under heavy fire.
Here’s how things are going on Friday February 16, 2024:
Humanitarian crisis in Gaza
- Israeli forces stormed the main building of Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, hours after Israeli gunfire killed a patient and injured six others inside the complex.
- It is the latest Israeli attack on hospitals, where Israeli forces say Hamas fighters are based, across the Gaza Strip.
- The raid on Nasser Hospital came after troops besieged the facility for nearly a week. Hundreds of staff, patients and refugees remain trapped inside, struggling under heavy fire and dwindling supplies, including food and water.
- Daniel Hagari, an Israeli army spokesman, said the raid on Nasser Hospital led to the arrest of dozens of “terrorists.”
- At the hospital, he said, they found weapons, including mortars and grenades, in the possession of the people they had arrested. Hagari said some of those arrested, including an ambulance driver, were involved in the Oct. 7 attack in Israel.
- The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) shared images showing the destruction in Gaza City caused by Israel’s war against Hamas, and said 70 percent of civilian infrastructure has been destroyed or seriously damaged.
Shocking footage shows unimaginable destruction at📍#Gaza city, including our health center.
+70% of civilian infrastructure – including homes, hospitals and schools – has been destroyed or seriously damaged.
84% of health establishments were affected by attacks.
Nowhere is safe. pic.twitter.com/9yRjJGvSMA
– UNRWA (@UNRWA) February 15, 2024
Regional tensions and diplomacy
- US President Joe Biden reiterated his warning to Israel not to press ahead with its planned assault on Rafah without a credible plan to ensure the safety of more than a million Palestinian refugees in the city, according to the White House.
- Separately, in Lebanon, the armed group Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets at a town in northern Israel in response to air raids that killed at least 10 civilians and three Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.
- France has delivered a written proposal to Beirut aimed at ending hostilities with Israel and resolving the disputed border between Lebanon and Israel, according to a document seen by Reuters.
- In Egypt, satellite images from February 15 show the construction of a wall along the Egypt-Gaza border. Egypt has vehemently rejected the forced displacement of Palestinians into its territory and denied preparing for an influx of Palestinians pushed toward the Sinai Peninsula.
- Meanwhile, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry also said a plane carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza had arrived at El Arish airfield in Egypt’s northern Sinai desert.
Occupied West Bank
- The Israeli army carried out a “campaign of arrests” in the town of Silat ad-Dhahr, south of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reported.
- Israeli forces attacked more than 15 homes and “arrested dozens of young men” in the town, Wafa said.
- Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces arrested a man from the town of Anabta, east of Tulkarem, while a man was also arrested in the town of Qalqilya.
No comment: demonstration in Mexico against judicial reform