Israel on Saturday continued to call on Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza, but gave them some more time before a likely ground offensive. For its part, the United States announced that it would send a second aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean “to deter hostile actions against Israel.” Follow the situation in the Middle East hour by hour.
Published on: October 15, 2023 – 12:49 am. Modified on: October 15, 2023 – 3:10 a.m
3 mins
2:21 a.m.: At least five are injured in an Israeli attack on Aleppo airport
An Israeli airstrike targeted Aleppo airport in northern Syria, injuring five people, Rami Abdel Rahmane, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), told Agence France-Presse civilians.
The Syrian Defense Ministry also confirmed the attacks on Saturday night. “At around 11:35 p.m., the Israeli enemy carried out an airstrike from the Mediterranean Sea on Aleppo International Airport, causing material damage to the airport and rendering it inoperable,” the ministry said in a statement.
1:16 a.m.: USA sends second aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean
The United States will send a second aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean “to deter hostile actions against Israel or any attempts to expand this war following the Hamas attack,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
The USS Eisenhower and its escort ships will join a first aircraft carrier deployed to the region following Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel on October 7, signaling “Washington’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security and our determination to defeat any state or “I am trying to escalate this war,” Lloyd Austin added in a statement.
12:35 a.m.: The WHO estimates that evacuating thousands of patients to the southern Gaza Strip “could amount to a death sentence.”
The Israeli army ordered all residents of the northern territory, including the sick and wounded, to move south for ground operations. In a statement, the World Health Organization (WHO) “strongly condemns the repeated Israeli orders to evacuate 22 hospitals treating more than 2,000 patients in northern Gaza.” She stressed that this “would be tantamount to a death sentence” due to the overloading of structures in the southern Gaza Strip.
“The forced evacuation of patients and health workers will further exacerbate the current humanitarian and public health emergency,” the WHO states. Critically ill patients in intensive care or on dialysis, newborns in incubators and pregnant women with complications “all risk immediate deterioration of their condition or death if they are forced to relocate and are deprived of vital care during their evacuation.”
12:11 a.m.: Israel gives the Palestinians more time to evacuate the north
Israel continued to call on the Palestinians to vacate northern Gaza and move south, but gave them a little more time. An army spokesman assured that the ground offensive would not begin on Sunday for humanitarian reasons.
02:34
Since Friday, thousands of residents have fled by any means possible, hastily piling up their belongings on trailers, carts, motorcycles, by car, through the ruins.
The death toll increased and amounted to 1,300 deaths on the Israeli side and 2,200 deaths on the Palestinian side. Israel prepared for a ground attack in the Gaza Strip on Saturday after urging Palestinians living in the densely populated area to flee south to a border crossing with Egypt that turned out to be closed.
01:49
With AFP and Portal