100,000 have fled to Rafah in recent days, UN says
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has told the BBC that it estimates that at least 100,000 people have moved into Rafah, the most southerly city in Gaza, in the last few days as fighting has intensified in and around Khan Younis and elsewhere.
The displacement follows orders from Israeli forces urging civilians to flee parts of Gaza where Israel says Hamas has a stronghold.
The OCHA says the influx of people has made overcrowding worse and put pressure on limited resources.
Speaking from Rafah in southern Gaza, the director of UNRWA, the UN’s relief agency, Tom White told the BBC there are “well over a million people” seeking safety in the city.
As a consequence of overcrowding, White said thousands of people are sleeping outside “under flimsy pieces of plastic”.
Key events
Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments of the day so far:
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Fierce Israeli tank fire and aerial bombing struck Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Friday night, residents said, after more than 200 people were reported killed in 24 hours in Israel’s campaign against Hamas militants. Reuters reports that planes also carried out a series of airstrikes on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, according to medics and Palestinian journalists.
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Israeli warplanes struck two urban refugee camps in central Gaza on Saturday. Residents in the urban refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij, two recent hotspots of combat, reported Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Saturday.
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A total of 21,672 Palestinians have been killed and 56,165 have been wounded in Israeli strikes in Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Saturday. The figures include 165 Palestinians killed and 250 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
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Juliette Touma from the UN aid agency UNRWA told the BBC “the humanitarian needs on the ground have continued to massively grow”. She said: “Nowhere is safe in Gaza, not the north, not the middle and not the south.”
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A Palestinian journalist working for Al-Quds TV was killed along with some of his family members in an airstrike on their house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza Strip, health officials and fellow journalists said. The government media office of Hamas-run Gaza says 106 Palestinian journalists have been killed in the Israeli offensive.
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South Africa has launched a case against Israel at the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) accusing the state of committing genocide in its military campaign in Gaza. Israel responded to the allegations “with disgust”, calling South Africa’s case a “blood libel” and urging the ICJ to reject it. Any case at the ICJ is likely to take years to resolve, but South Africa has called for the court to convene in the next few days to issue “provisional measures” calling for a ceasefire.
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The UN’s top aid official has “strongly condemned” reports that Israeli troops opened fire on an aid convoy in the Gaza Strip. The director of UNRWA earlier on Friday accused Israel of firing on an aid convoy on Thursday as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli army. Martin Griffiths, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said the convoy was fired upon despite being “clearly marked”, adding: “Attacks on humanitarian workers are unlawful.”
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The Biden administration has again bypassed congressional review for weapons sale to Israel. The US state department said the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, informed Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5m sale for equipment required to make the 155mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.
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The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said he was “very concerned” about the growing threat of infectious diseases facing Gaza’s people. Nearly 180,00 people were suffering upper respiratory infections and about 136,400 cases of diarrhoea – half among children under five – had been recorded since mid-October, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a social media post.
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The IDF said it located and destroyed a hideout belonging to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in northern Gaza. An investigation by IDF troops found the apartment, located on the outskirts of Gaza City, as well as a large tunnel system under it which was part of a network used by senior Hamas members, an IDF spokesperson said.
A total of 21,672 Palestinians have been killed and 56,165 have been wounded in Israeli strikes in Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Saturday.
The figures include 165 Palestinians killed and 250 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Juliette Touma from the UN Aid Agency UNRWA has spoken to the BBC about the situation in Gaza. She said “the humanitarian needs on the ground have continued to massively grow”.
We continue to have restrictions to access areas in the Gaza Strip where we should access on a regular basis, like the north of the Gaza Strip.
There’s very, very little commercial supplies coming into Gaza and there’s no market, so more and more people are depending by the day, by the hour, on organisations like UNRWA.
It’s safe to say that every single person in Gaza, a population of 2.2 million people is impacted one way or another.
She also spoke about where the people displaced by the war in Gaza are now living.
She said:
At least 1.4 million people are now living in UNRWA facilities – that is what used to be mainly schools that the agency ran until the war began.
Many are now living anywhere they can find – on the street, with friends crammed in apartments – 70 people in one apartment, and those who can afford it are renting rooms.
But many are living in the open, in the parks, in the open areas, in their cars, people are searching for safety which they cannot find because there is no safety in Gaza.
Nowhere is safe in Gaza, not the north, not the middle and not the south.
165 Palestinians killed in past 24 hours
Some 165 Palestinians have been killed and 250 wounded in Israeli strikes in central Gaza during the past 24 hours, a senior health official said on Saturday.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the biggest and most important medical facility in the south of the tiny, crowded enclave, Red Crescent images posted online showed ambulances operating amid smashed streets, carrying injured children, Reuters reports.
On Saturday the Palestinian Culture Ministry said Israeli strikes had struck a medieval bathhouse. The old Great Mosque was hit earlier in the war.
Israeli warplanes struck two urban refugee camps in central Gaza on Saturday, Associated Press reports.
Residents in the urban refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij, two recent hotspots of combat, reported Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Saturday.
Nuseirat resident Mustafa Abu Wawee said a strike hit the home of one of his relatives, killing two people.
“The [Israeli] occupation is doing everything to force people to leave,” he said over the phone while searching along with others for four people missing under the rubble. “They want to break our spirit and will but they will fail. We are here to stay.”
Bureij resident Rami Abu Mosab said sounds of gunfire echoed across the camp overnight, followed by heavy airstrikes on Saturday.
With Israeli forces pushing deeper into Khan Younis and the camps of central Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into the already crowded city of Rafah at the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days.
Drone footage showed a vast camp of thousands of tents and makeshift shacks set up on what had been empty land on Rafah’s western outskirts next to UN warehouses. People arrived in Rafah in trucks, in carts and on foot.
Those who did not find space in the already overwhelmed shelters put up tents on roadsides slick with mud from winter rains.
Fighting has been raging across Gaza this morning, where displaced Palestinians are “exhausted” with no end in sight to war between the besieged territory’s Hamas rulers and Israel, now in its 13th week, AFP reports.
Smoke billowed over the Gaza Strip’s southern city of Khan Younis, the focus of recent fighting in the grinding war.
Further south, the border city of Rafah near Egypt was teeming with Palestinians seeking safety from Israel’s relentless bombardment in its fight against militants.
“Enough with this war! We are totally exhausted,” Umm Louay Abu Khater, a 49-year-old woman who had fled her home in Khan Younis, taking refuge in Rafah, told AFP.
She said:
We are constantly displaced from one place to another in cold weather. The bombs keep falling on us day and night.
There was continuous artillery shelling overnight in Rafah and Khan Younis.
The Israeli army kept up its campaign following the attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October, despite mounting international pushback, reporting “fierce battles” and air strikes across the narrow Palestinian territory.
In Beit Lahia in north Gaza, “two Hamas military compounds were dismantled by the troops”, a military statement on Saturday said, and dozens of “terrorists” were killed in Gaza City.
Here are some of the latest images on the newswires coming from Israel and Palestine.
A Palestinian journalist working for Al-Quds TV was killed along with some of his family members in an airstrike on their house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza Strip, health officials and fellow journalists said.
The government media office of Hamas-run Gaza says 106 Palestinian journalists have been killed in the Israeli offensive, Reuters reports.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said last week that the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war were the deadliest recorded for journalists, with the most journalists killed in a single year in one location.
Most of the journalists and media workers killed in the war were Palestinian. The report by the US-based CPJ said it was “particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military”.
Earlier this month, a Reuters investigation found an Israeli tank crew killed a Reuters journalist, Issam Abdallah, and wounded six reporters in Lebanon on 13 October by firing two shells in quick succession while the journalists were filming cross-border shelling.
Israel has previously said it has never and will never deliberately target journalists and that it is doing what it can to avoid civilian casualties.
The high death toll has caused concern even among its staunchest allies.
Israeli forces pound Gaza as Palestinian officials say nearly 200 killed in a day
Fierce Israeli tank fire and aerial bombing struck Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Friday night, residents said, after nearly 200 people were reported killed in 24 hours in Israel’s campaign against Hamas militants.
Reuters reports that planes also carried out a series of airstrikes on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, according to medics and Palestinian journalists.
Israeli forces have been pounding Khan Younis in preparation for an anticipated further advance into the main southern city, swathes of which they captured in early December.
The defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said troops were reaching Hamas command centres and arms depots. The Israeli military said it had destroyed a tunnel complex in the basement of one of the houses of the Hamas leader for Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, in Gaza City.
Health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza said 187 Palestinians were confirmed killed in Israeli strikes in the 24-hour period, raising the overall toll to 21,507. Thousands more bodies are feared to be buried in the ruins of neighbourhoods.
Opening summary
Welcome to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war with me, Adam Fulton. It’s 9.30am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv on this 30 December. Here’s a rundown on the latest developments.
Intense Israeli tank fire and aerial bombing hit the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Friday night, residents said, after nearly 200 people were killed in 24 hours in Israel’s offensive in the strip, according to Gaza health authorities.
Planes also carried out a series of airstrikes on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, medics and Palestinian journalists said.
Israel’s defence minister said troops were reaching Hamas command centres and arms depots, while the Israeli military said it had destroyed a tunnel complex in the basement of one of the houses of the Hamas leader for Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, in Gaza City.
More on those stories shortly. In other news:
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South Africa has launched a case against Israel at the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) accusing the state of committing genocide in its military campaign in Gaza. Israel responded to the allegations “with disgust”, calling South Africa’s case a “blood libel” and urging the ICJ to reject it. Any case at the ICJ is likely to take years to resolve, but South Africa has called for the court to convene in the next few days to issue “provisional measures” calling for a ceasefire.
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The UN’s top aid official has “strongly condemned” reports that Israeli troops opened fire on an aid convoy in the Gaza Strip. The director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) earlier on Friday accused Israel of firing on an aid convoy on Thursday as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli army. Martin Griffiths, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said the convoy was fired upon despite being “clearly marked”, adding: “Attacks on humanitarian workers are unlawful.”
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Qatari mediators have told Israel that Hamas has “agreed in principle” to resume talks on the release of further hostages held in Gaza, according to a report by Israel’s Walla news on Friday. But a senior Hamas official later told Al Jazeera there was currently no talk of a hostage exchange before fighting in Gaza stops. Separately, a delegation of high-level Hamas leaders is visiting Egypt for talks aimed at bringing the Gaza war to an end.
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At least 21,507 people have been killed in Gaza since the war with Israel broke out nearly 12 weeks ago, included 187 fatalities over the previous 24 hours, according to Friday’s figures from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. At least 308 people were killed while in UN shelters in Gaza since the war began, the UNRWA said.
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The Biden administration has again bypassed congressional review for weapons sale to Israel. The US state department said the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, informed Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5m sale for equipment required to make the 155mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.
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The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said he was “very concerned” about the growing threat of infectious diseases facing Gaza’s people. Nearly 180,00 people were suffering upper respiratory infections and about 136,400 cases of diarrhoea – half among children under five – had been recorded since mid-October, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a social media post.
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Israel detained at least 14 Palestinians, including a child, during its latest raids inside the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said on Friday. A day earlier, the UN published a report deploring what it said was a “rapid deterioration” of human rights in the West Bank and urged Israeli authorities to end violence against the Palestinian population there.
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The UN secretary general, António Guterres, is “gravely concerned” about a further spillover of the Gaza conflict which could have “devastating” consequences for the entire region, his spokesperson has said. In a statement on Friday, Guterres warned of a “continued risk of wider regional conflagration” the longer the conflict in Gaza continued.
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Three Palestinian brothers who were detained by Israeli soldiers in Gaza have said they and other men were beaten, stripped to their underwear, burnt with cigarettes and subjected to other forms of mistreatment during their detention. Sobhi Yaseen and his brothers Sady and Ibrahim told Reuters they were taken by the Israeli military from their homes in northern Gaza early this month and held for up to two weeks. In response, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson’s office said it was operating “to dismantle Hamas’ military capabilities” and detainees were treated in accordance with international law.
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The IDF said it located and destroyed a hideout belonging to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in northern Gaza. An investigation by IDF troops found the apartment, located on the outskirts of Gaza City, as well as a large tunnel system under it which was part of a network used by senior Hamas members, an IDF spokesperson said.
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Iran announced it had hanged four people it claims were engaged in “sabotage” on behalf of Israel. The three men and one woman had been sentenced to death on charges of “moharebeh”, or “waging war against God”, and “corruption on Earth” through their “collaboration with the Zionist regime”, and were executed in Iran’s north-west province of West Azerbaijan.
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