Cover photo: Injured Palestinians at Ahli Arab Hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, October 17, 2023. Abed Khaled / AP
- At least 200 people were killed in a strike at a hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday eveningreported the Ministry of Health of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.
- The Israeli army strongly denies being behind this shooting. “We have enough information now, it took time, but we have to tell the truth and it was not Israeli attacks that hit the hospital,” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said during a news conference overnight on Wednesday . According to the IDF, Islamic Jihad fired a barrage of rockets into Israel and one of its rockets fell on Ahli Arab Hospital. The Israeli army released a video intended to support its statements.
- Islamic Jihad called Israel’s accusations “lies” on Wednesday. “As usual, the Zionist enemy is trying to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre he committed by inventing lies by bombing the hospital and pointing the finger at Islamic Jihad,” said a press release Palestinian Islamist movement. “We maintain that these allegations are false and baseless,” he added.
- Demonstrations broke out in several cities in the Maghreb and the Middle East on Tuesday evening in response to the strike against the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. More than 3,000 people demonstrated outside the French embassy in Tunis, accusing Paris of being an ally of Israel.
- United States President Joe Biden, who left for Israel on Tuesday, spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu after the Gaza hospital shooting. He also communicated with the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, who canceled the four-party summit scheduled to take place on Wednesday with the American president, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi.
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. He condemned Hamas’s “glorification and glorification of inhumane and abhorrent violence” and claimed to have discussed with the Israeli prime minister the issue of “better access for humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip.”
- Hezbollah announced the deaths of five of its members in southern Lebanon. Tuesday. The organization confronts the Israeli army on the border between Lebanon and the Jewish state. The IDF announced this on Tuesday morning Four attackers were killed during an “attempt to infiltrate a terrorist group” from Lebanon.
- The Israeli army announced that it had killed Ayman Nofal, a commander in the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades. He was also a member of the General Military Council of Al-Qassam. On the night of Monday 16th to Tuesday 17th, the IDF claimed to have killed another Hamas member, Ossama Mazini, in an airstrike.
- Hamas has released video of a French-Israeli hostage it is holding in the Gaza Strip. The 21-year-old girl’s name is Mia Schem. Visibly injured in her arm, she explains that she was at the rave party that was attacked in the early hours of the Hamas raid on Israeli soil on October 7th. “Please get me out of here as quickly as possible,” she concluded her message.
- According to an updated Israeli army report, almost 200 people have been taken hostage by Hamas. For its part, Hamas is holding “between 200 and 250 people,” according to Abou Obeida, spokesman for the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist movement.
- The European Union will open a humanitarian airlift to Gaza via Egypt. “The Palestinians in Gaza need humanitarian assistance (…). The first two flights will take off this week, bringing humanitarian supplies to Gaza,” von der Leyen said from Tirana, Albania. On Saturday, Ursula von der Leyen announced a tripling of humanitarian aid to Gaza from 25 million to 75 million euros.
- Around a million people have been displaced in the Gaza Strip by the war, the United Nations (UN) Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said on Sunday. “This number is likely to rise as people continue to leave their homes,” the UNRWA communications director said. The evacuation order issued by Israel affects 1.1 million residents in the north of the enclave.
- At least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel since the Hamas attack on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, October 7th. The death toll in the Hamas-controlled enclave rose to 2,750such a current assessment.
- The number of French nationals killed in Hamas attacks against Israel has continued to rise, reaching 21 dead and 11 missingthe French Foreign Ministry reported on Tuesday.
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