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EXPLANER
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says it can no longer provide services in northern Gaza, citing staff shortages and a “collapse of social order”.
Here’s how things are going on Saturday February 24, 2024:
Humanitarian crisis, fighting on the ground:
- UNRWA official says UN agency for Palestinian refugees can no longer provide services in northern Gaza, citing staff shortages and a ‘collapse of social order’ amid attacks Israeli attacks against civilians and restrictions on access to food aid that left the population hungry.
- An Israeli strike on a house housing displaced Palestinians killed at least 24 people on Friday in Deir el-Balah, Gaza. Staff at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital say they are still receiving injured people and the death toll is expected to rise.
- The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 104 people were killed and 160 injured in Israeli attacks between Thursday and Friday afternoon, according to the latest situation report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). .
- Israeli forces attacked villages and towns across the occupied West Bank, searching homes and confronting residents resisting the incursions, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Diplomacy
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has released his most detailed vision yet of a post-war Gaza. This includes maintaining indefinite military control over the Gaza Strip; hand over the civil administration of the enclave to Palestinians with no connection to Hamas – he did not cite the Palestinian Authority (PA) – and create a buffer zone along the border between Gaza and Egypt that Israel will control.
- The Palestinian Authority has criticized the plan, saying security can only be achieved through the creation of a Palestinian state.
- The UN’s highest court has completed its fifth day of hearings following a request from the UN General Assembly to issue an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reiterated his criticism of Israel’s attack on Gaza, saying it is “not a war, but a genocide.”
- Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, has warned that states that transfer weapons to Israel as part of its war on Gaza could be complicit in “atrocity crimes.” “.
- The Reuters news agency reported that talks were underway in Paris in what appears to be the most serious effort in weeks to end the fighting in Gaza.
- Singapore reiterated its calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza during G20 meetings in Brazil, local media reported.
Regional tensions
- The US military says it has destroyed seven anti-ship cruise missiles that Yemen’s Houthi rebel group planned to launch at targets in the Red Sea.
- The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the British bulk carrier MV Rubymar, which was attacked by Houthi forces last weekend in the Red Sea, is slowly taking on water, leaking oil and posing an environmental risk in the region.
