Hamas’s Ministry of Health reported the deaths of more than 80 people in two separate Israeli attacks on a United Nations-run refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, November 18. The Israeli army, which is shelling Palestinian territory in the hands of the Islamist movement in retaliation for an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7, has not confirmed the attacks. However, Jewish state forces said operations were underway in the area. Follow our live stream.
Chaotic situation around the Al-Chifa hospital in Gaza. According to AFP, hundreds of people left Gaza’s Al-Chifa hospital on foot on Saturday. Israeli soldiers are raiding the hospital for the fourth day in a row. However, there were still “120 injured” and premature babies, the Hamas Ministry of Health said. Doctors remained at the hospital to care for patients, it said. The Israeli army claims it did not issue an evacuation order but was “responding to a request” from the hospital director. Israel believes that Hamas, which is in power in Gaza, is using this facility as a military base.
Airstrike on hospital kills 26. The airstrike took place in the Hamad district. The director of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in central Gaza announced on Saturday that 26 people had been killed in an attack on three residential buildings in the city. 23 people were also seriously injured in that attack, he told AFP.
There is an “immediate danger of famine”. “We don’t ask for the moon. We demand essential measures necessary to meet the basic needs of the civilian population and contain the progression of this crisis,” protested the head of UN humanitarian operations Martin Griffiths in a video intervention in New York. The population of the Gaza Strip is “at imminent risk of famine,” warned the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). There is an “urgent need to improve the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a telephone interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
New demonstration for “a ceasefire in Gaza” and the release of hostages. The Socialist Party, the French Communist Party and Europe Ecologie Les Verts (The Ecologists), as well as the CGT, FSU and Solidaires demonstrated in Paris on Saturday afternoon for an “immediate ceasefire in Gaza” and “the release of all hostages”. The signatories of the press release also call for “the lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip,” “an end to human rights violations and colonization in the West Bank,” and “the resumption of the peace process recognizing the State of Palestine from the State of Israel. Further demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza are planned for Saturday afternoon in Annecy, Marseille, Strasbourg, Lille, Nantes, Rennes, Montpellier, Lyon and Bordeaux.