American billionaire Elon Musk assured on Saturday that his Starlink satellite internet access service would support the connectivity of “internationally recognized aid organizations” in Gaza, which has been cut off from the world since Friday due to the shutdown of telecommunications and the internet.
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“Starlink will support the connectivity of internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza,” wrote Elon Musk on the social network X (formerly Twitter), which he also owns.
He was responding to a message from Democratic House Speaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday, who said the shutdown of telecommunications in the Palestinian territory was “unacceptable.”
The war between Israel and Hamas, which entered its 22nd day on Saturday, was sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s unprecedented attack on Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip on October 7.
In retaliation, the Israeli army has been relentlessly bombing and besieging this narrow Hamas-controlled area, home to some 2.4 million Palestinians, since 2007.
Hamas’ health ministry said Saturday that 7,703 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war with Israel began, including more than 3,500 children. The latest report submitted on Friday showed 7,326 deaths.
According to Israeli authorities, more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel.
The Starlink satellite internet access service, operated by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, was also deployed in Ukraine shortly after Russia invaded in February 2022.
In September, the American billionaire said he had prevented a Ukrainian attack on a Russian naval base in 2022 by rejecting a request from Kiev to activate that service in the Black Sea near Moscow-annexed Crimea.
“We have received an urgent request from government authorities to activate Starlink to Sevastopol. The apparent intention was to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” he wrote on X.
These statements were strongly condemned by Mykhaïlo Podoliak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency. The city of Sevastopol is the base of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea on the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.