The following is a reposting of a very helpful update of the ethnic cleansing war in Gaza to date.
Since the Al Shifa Hospital is referenced, I highly recommend first watching this short documentary recently published by Al Jazeera 26 October 2023 which is described as follows.
Gaza’s Al Shifa: A hospital on the brink | Featured Documentary
Gaza’s main hospital is overflowing with both the living and the dead. The morgues are at full capacity and the bodies spill to the street outside Al Shifa hospital.
Inside hundreds of seriously injured fill the hallways as the doctors decide which lives they should save. Men, women and children are among the wounded and doctors work under immense pressure knowing all services will soon grind to a halt when the backup generators stop working.
Israel’s complete siege on Gaza has meant no food, no water, no electricity and no fuel. As these deplete faster than the hospital can cope, Al Shifa is on the brink on catastrophe. While the hospital struggles to cope with the injured, other patients include 70 people on ventilators, 200 receiving dialysis and 118 babies in incubators. Without electricity, they will die. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a medical charity called the escalation “abhorrent”.
“As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken. Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues,” Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East, said in a statement.
We filmed inside Al Shifa’s NICU where 118 are currently in incubators. Most of them are connected to mechanical ventilation. As the generators fall silent, the incubators will stop working and most of these babies will die. Dialysis patients also face the same fate.
The dialysis department at Al Shifa receives 1,800 patients who receive dialysis three times a week. We meet some of these patients whose life are not only threatened by the bombardment, but now vulnerable if unable to receive life saving treatment.
The hospitals of Gaza have also become shelter to many, and Al Shifa is no different. It is now home to hundreds of displaced people with nowhere to go. With basic services and necessities are no longer available for them we hear from several who had no choice but to come to the hospital for refuge.
With so many dead, the morgues are overwhelmed. Undertakers struggle to identify and bury the deceased. When the generators stop working, the morgues will no longer be able to function.
No one knows the reality of what is happening in Al Shifa better than the medics. And while they may be doctors or nurses, they are also residents of Gaza. We meet these medical teams who tell us about the daily horrors they have witnessed since Israel’s latest assault began.
Alternatively, watch the video here on Al Jazeera’s website.
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 29: Israel hits hospitals, ambulances, and schools across Gaza
Israel targeted an ambulance convoy at al-Shifa hospital, while other schools and hospitals were targeted as Israel doubles down on lifesaving civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, Palestinian workers from Gaza return, recounting torture.
PALESTINIAN CHILDREN HOLD A CANDLELIGHT VIGIL AT AL-SHIFA’ HOSPITAL IN GAZA CITY, NOVEMBER 03, 2023. (PHOTO: BY SAEED JARAS/APA IMAGES)
Casualties
9,448 Palestinians killed, including 3,900 children, and 24,158 wounded in Gaza
145 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
Key Developments
Israel claims attack on ambulance convoy at al-Shifa hospital, killing at least 15 people.
Israeli forces bomb at least one other hospital and an UNRWA school where thousands had taken shelter, as UNRWA warns that UN flag “cannot even provide [Palestinians] safety.”
Thousands of Palestinians workers who were arbitrarily detained after October 7 are deported back to Gaza, and recount violent beatings, interrogation, and imprisonment.
‘Alarming’ Israeli army and settler violence continues in the occupied West Bank, as at least one Palestinian teenager is killed.
Several Arab states hold a meeting in Jordan on Saturday, set to meet with U.S. envoy.
Honduras recalls its ambassador to Israel over its “genocide” in Gaza.
Pro-Palestine activists prevent U.S. military ship believed to be headed to Israel from leaving Oakland, California port.
National March on Washington, D.C. scheduled for Saturday to call for a ceasefire in Gaza
Gaza hospitals, schools, mosques, and water tanks — nowhere is safe
Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza somehow reached further lows nearly a month on, as the army attacked an ambulance convoy outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Friday, killing 15 people and injuring 60, the Gaza Ministry of Health said. One of those killed has been identified as journalist Haitham Hararah.
The ambulances were due to transfer a number of injured people through to the Rafah crossing to receive medical treatment in Egypt. While 28 people were due to enter Egypt on Friday, 11 of them were blocked from leaving Gaza because of the attack on al-Shifa.
Unlike some other attacks on medical facilities, the Israeli army promptly claimed responsibility for the airstrike, claiming that the ambulances were used by Hamas — an allegation that the Gaza Ministry of Health forcefully rejected, noting that at least 27 ambulances, and 105 health institutions have been targeted by Israel in the past four weeks. Some 150 health personnel have been killed, while 16 hospitals and 32 primary care centers have been put out of service by airstrikes and dire fuel shortages, it added.
“We affirm that the heinous crime committed by the Israeli occupation, with premeditation and deliberation, and accompanied by the Israeli occupation’s explicit admission of its commission, constitutes a war crime,” a statement by ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “utterly shocked” by the attack.
“We reiterate: patients, health workers, facilities, and ambulances must be protected at all times. Always,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Meanwhile U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified”. “Now, for nearly one month, civilians in Gaza, including children and women, have been besieged, denied aid, killed, and bombed out of their homes,” Guterres said. “This must stop.”
The airstrike at al-Shifa was far from the only Israeli attack on spaces defined as “protected civilian objects” under international law in the span of 24 hours.
On Saturday, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported that another strike had hit Al-Nasr children’s hospital in Gaza City, killing at least two people.
An Israeli airstrike also hit U.N.-run al-Fakhoura school in Jabalia refugee camp on Saturday, killing at least 15 people who had taken refuge there. “These are people seeking shelter under a UN flag seeking protection under international humanitarian law… We cannot even provide them safety under a UN flag,” UNRWA Director in Gaza, Thomas White, had said a day earlier.
Of the nearly 1.5 million people currently internally displaced in Gaza, some 690,000 are sheltering in 149 UNRWA facilities, the U.N. has reported.
In total, the Gaza Health Ministry said at least 231 people were killed in the span of 24 hours, raising the death toll in Gaza to 9,488, including 3,900 children, with 24,158 wounded. It added that it had received 2,000 reports of missing persons, including 1,250 children believed to be trapped under the rubble. These missing people are not included in the death toll.
Reports also detailed the seemingly deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, including generators, solar panels, and water tanks — as Gaza already suffers from life-threatening shortages in water, electricity, and medicine. Meanwhile, the U.S. has said it has received no records of Israeli claims that Hamas has blocked or seized humanitarian aid supplies — claims that have been levied to justify preventing the entry of fuel and other necessities into Gaza.
Al-Jazeera meanwhile reported that two mosques had been bombed in Gaza City’s al-Sabra neighborhood.
While Israel has repeatedly called for civilians to evacuate northern Gaza, 14 Palestinians, including children, were killed in an airstrike on Friday while seeking to head south. Witnesses told WAFA news agency that rescue vehicles were unable to reach the scene as Israeli forces were targeting any vehicles in the area. That same day, five people were killed in an airstrike on a home in Bani Suheila in the southern Gaza Strip — the latest Israeli attack confirming that nowhere is safe in the tiny Palestinian enclave.
As Israel ramps up its cruelty in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back against mild U.S. calls for a “humanitarian pause.” This comes as Al-Jazeera estimates that the onslaught on Gaza has cost Israel at least $2 billion so far.
Palestinian workers return to Gaza with harrowing testimonies of abuse
Israel deported thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were detained en masse in what was called “unlawful, arbitrary detention” without charge or trial in the wake of October 7, after which they were collectively stripped of their work permits.
Some of the workers, who were forced to cross back into Gaza on foot, spoke of severe mistreatment, as at least 4,000 Palestinian workers were rounded up by Israeli forces following the Hamas attack on October 7. Workers told Al-Jazeera that they were brutally interrogated and tortured.
“For three days, we remained handcuffed and blindfolded,” one of them told AP news agency. “They would put us under the sun for two, three or four hours, with no water, food or anything.”
Other workers said that their belongings, including cell phones and money, had been confiscated when they were detained, and were not given back to them when they were deported. Others showed numbered identification bracelets around their wrists — a troubling detail that many online have likened to the numbers tattooed on prisoners held in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
NUMBERED BRACELETS PLACED ON PALESTINIAN WORKERS FROM GAZA. (PHOTO: SOCIAL MEDIA)
At least one worker, 61-year-old Mansour Warsh Agha, died shortly after being released, in circumstances that have yet to be explained by Israel. His body reportedly shows bruises and signs of beatings.
Some 18,500 Palestinians from Gaza had permits allowing them to work in Israel before October 7. Many who found themselves in Israel that day tried to flee to the occupied West Bank to escape Israeli reprisal — but were detained during Israeli army raids there.
Israel has multiplied its imprisonment of Palestinians in the past month, detaining over 6,000 people, including both workers from Gaza and residents of the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem — more than the number of Palestinians that were already in Israeli prisons before October 7. Before last month, it was estimated that 40 percent of Palestinian men would be detained by Israel at least once in their lives
West Bank: one teenager killed, settler violence
Armed confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian resistance groups in the occupied West Bank were reported once again on Friday night in Balata and Jenin refugee camps in Nablus and Jenin respectively. Some 50 Palestinians were detained overnight by Israeli forces across the West Bank, many of them in al-Fawwar refugee camp near Hebron. Palestinian prisoners’ rights groups have said that more than 2,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel in the past four weeks, many of them held under Israel’s much-decried policy of administrative detention, under which Palestinians are imprisoned indefinitely without charges or trial.
Muhammad Wael Ja’bari, 17, was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a demonstration in Hebron on Friday, while two others were injured. Eight Palestinians were wounded by Israeli forces in Beit Ummar, as soldiers reportedly ransacked homes, shops, and mosques, planting Israeli flags on the roofs of buildings. Meanwhile, Israeli residents of the illegal settlement of Pisgat Zeev injured at least one Palestinian when they opened fire on Shu’fat refugee camp on Friday, before Israeli forces came and shot tear gas and stun grenades at Palestinian residents.
There have been widespread reports of torture and abuse of Palestinian detainees at the hands of Israeli soldiers since October 7.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has called the situation in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem “alarming and urgent,” amid widespread army raids and unchecked settler violence, which has led to Palestinians being killed, injured, and subjected to mass forced displacement in what Israeli human rights group B’Tselem had previously termed “pogroms.”
“Despite hundreds of settlers being involved in this daily violence, since 7 October Israeli forces have reportedly arrested only two settlers for assaulting Palestinians and killing one Palestinian farmer,” the U.N. noted. “Settler violence, which was already at record levels, has also escalated dramatically, averaging seven attacks a day. In more than a third of these attacks, firearms were used.”
Meanwhile, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right extremist and settler living in Kyriat Arba in violation of international law, has downplayed deadly settler violence in the West Bank as mere “graffiti” in a cabinet meeting, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Friday.
Blinken meeting with Arab leaders in Jordan
Representatives of the Jordanian, Emirati, Saudi, Qatari, and Egyptian governments, along with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh, were due to hold a coordination meeting on Saturday to discuss how to reach a resolution to the devastation in Gaza.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel on Friday for the third time since October 7, was set to meet the Arab envoys later in the day.
Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE have normalized relations with Israel, while Saudi Arabia is widely believed to have informal ties.
Israel’s efforts to normalize relations with Arab countries in recent years have been severely shaken by its indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza — with some countries recalling their ambassadors and others facing serious pressure from their citizens.
On Friday, Oman, which does not have official relations with Israel, said it saw the most recent attack on al-Shifa hospital as “a continuation of war crimes and genocide and a clear breach of international laws and conventions established to protect people during conflicts.”
That same day, Honduras became the fourth Latin American country to recall its ambassador to Israel in recent weeks.
“Given the serious humanitarian situation suffered by the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, the Government of the President [Xiomara Castro de Zelaya] has decided to immediately call Mr. Roberto Martinez, Ambassador of the Republic of Honduras in Israel, to Tegucigalpa for consultations,” Honduras Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Reina wrote on X.
Protests are taking place across the United Kingdom and elsewhere on Saturday, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, while a march is planned in Washington, D.C.
The following are updates from Al Jazeera’s live feed as at 1:50am GMT, 7 November 2023.
Israeli bombardment across Gaza continues as the death toll in the besieged Palestinian territory reaches at least 10,022 since October 7. At least 152 people have been killed in the occupied West Bank and more than 1,400 in Israel during the same period.
The Palestinian representative at the UN, Riyad Mansour, has demanded accountability for “crimes” committed by Israel and blamed the US for blocking the UN ceasefire deal.
The Red Crescent has appealed for urgent help, saying fuel at Gaza’s Al-Quds Hospital could run out in 48 hours and Al-Awda Hospital has warned of a similar breakdown by Wednesday night.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has told reporters Gaza is “becoming a graveyard for children” as he renewed demands to reach the elusive ceasefire.
Human Rights Watch has called for a weapons embargo on Israel and Palestinian armed groups.
An Israeli drone strike has struck a target in the occupied West Bank’s Tulkarem refugee camp, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the incident in the northwest side of the Palestinian territory.
Earlier, our Al Jazeera correspondent, Zein Basravi, who is reporting from Ramallah, reported of an ongoing Israeli raid in Tulkarem, with at least 25 armoured vehicles and a large number of heavily armed soldiers seen being deployed in the area.
(01:25 GMT):
UN says 5000 people moved South on Monday, after Gaza cut in two
UN monitors say that only about 5000 people moved from north to southern Gaza on Monday, after Israel announced on Sunday it had cut the besieged enclave in two.
Israel opened a “corridor” for just four hours on Monday from 10:00 to 14:00 local time, the UN said, adding that Palestinians could only make the journey by foot as “roads leading to the main crossing junction had been heavily damaged.”
“Entire families, including children, elderly people and persons with disabilities reported walking long distances, carrying their personal belongings by hand,” the UN relief agency said in its latest daily update.
“Today, there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters on Sunday, calling it a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against Hamas.
(01:40 GMT):
Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals continue, killing at least 8
At least eight people were killed and dozens wounded in Israeli attacks on the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza City, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The medical complex, which includes the Al-Nasser Children’s Hospital, the Rantisi Specialised Hospital, the Eye Hospital and the Psychiatric Hospital, suffered direct and indirect hits from Israeli missiles.
Jamil Suleiman, the general director of the Psychiatric Hospital, said that if Gaza’s hospitals continue to be attacked by Israel, there is little use for the United Nations Security Council or the World Health Organization.
“If there is no guarantee for a patient’s rights, then there is no point having an international health body just witnessing a population getting slaughtered,” Suleiman said.
Deaths, injuries reported in Israeli raids that hit vicinity of two Gaza hospitals
We are getting reports from our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic that at least two Palestinians have been killed and several others were injured in separate Israeli aur raids that targeted the vicinity of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Hanoun and al-Quds Hospital in theTal al-Hawa district.
A video shown live on Al Jazeera Arabic showed the aftermath of one of the strikes, with civil defence workers frantically digging the rubble of a building and carrying the injured to an ambulance.
We will bring you more details of the this latest attacks as soon as we can.
The government media office in Gaza had earlier announced that 16 hospitals and 34 health centres in the besieged Palestinian enclave have been out of service since the start of the Israeli retaliatory attacks on October 7.
Where is the international condemnation of Israels genocide?
It's almost like they want the rest of the Arab world to get angry and rise up in unison.
On a SARCASTIC note, it's good to see the Israelis have modernised the cataloguing of their victims with plastic tags, instead of using the old tattoed bar code on the forearm.
Where is the international condemnation of Israels genocide?
It's almost like they want the rest of the Arab world to get angry and rise up in unison.
On a SARCASTIC note, it's good to see the Israelis have modernised the cataloguing of their victims with plastic tags, instead of using the old tattoed bar code on the forearm.
All we are saying is give peace a chance!
The USA has become ATM of foreign wars like Ukraine and Gaza: why?
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/all-we-are-saying-is-give-peace-a