The war between Israel and Hamas, which entered its 43rd day on Saturday, was sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip, where it seized power in 2007.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas and relentlessly shell the besieged area, home to 2.4 million Palestinians. The Israeli army launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip on October 27.
Here are the latest developments:
Evacuation order in al-Chifa
Israeli soldiers conducting a raid on al-Chifa hospital in Gaza City for the fourth day in a row have ordered its evacuation, according to an AFP journalist.
Shortly afterwards, according to the same source, hundreds of people began leaving the hospital on foot towards the south of the Gaza Strip, but “120 wounded” and premature babies were still in the facility, the Hamas health ministry said.
According to the United Nations, 2,300 patients, nurses and displaced people were in the hospital complex, the largest in the Gaza Strip.
Electricity stopped working there several days ago because of a lack of fuel for generators, and department heads said several dozen patients had died.
Israel asserts that Hamas is using the hospital as a military base, something the Palestinian Islamist movement denies.
Israeli deployment “increasingly unjustified”
The head of UN humanitarian operations, Martin Griffiths, called on the United Nations for a “ceasefire” in Gaza.
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted that Gaza’s health system was “on the verge of collapse” and judged “the scale of Israel’s response increasingly unwarranted.”
First fuel delivery
After a green light from Israel, the first shipment of fuel arrived in the Gaza Strip on Friday evening to restart the power generators of hospitals and telecommunications networks in the besieged area.
At the request of the United States, Israel allowed two tank trucks to enter the Gaza Strip every day. The Rafah border crossing authority on the Egyptian border announced that 17,000 liters of fuel had been delivered.
Strike against residential buildings
The director of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, announced on Saturday that 26 people had been killed in an airstrike on three residential buildings in the city.
According to the United Nations, 1.65 million Gazans have been displaced by the war.
Violence in the West Bank
Five Palestinian fighters from Fatah, President Mahmoud Abbas’s movement, were killed on Saturday in a very rare airstrike on Nablus, a large city in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Red Crescent and sources within Fatah said.
For its part, the Israeli army announced that it had eliminated “a certain number of terrorists in Balata,” the refugee camp in Nablus that hosts 24,000 people, according to the UN that manages it.
Balance sheets
According to the latest Hamas government report, 12,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombings of the Gaza Strip since the start of the war, including 5,000 children and 3,300 women.
According to Israeli authorities, the Hamas attack claimed 1,200 lives on the Israeli side, most of them civilians killed on October 7.
The Israeli military estimates that around 240 people were taken hostage. According to them, 51 soldiers have been killed in Palestinian territory since October 7th.