At least two people were killed last night and others injured in a Israeli attack in front of the entrance to the al-Nasser children’s hospital, in Gaza City. This was reported by the local Ministry of Health.
Just a few hours after another Israeli attack to the two ambulances leaving Shifa hospital, in the city of Gaza. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified”. Israel confirmed that it had targeted the vehicle but replied that the ambulance was being used “by a Hamas terrorist cell”. In turn, the Islamist movement denied and claimed that the attack on the convoy, which was supposed to take the wounded out of the Strip, killed at least 15 people. According to Hamas, a school in the north of the Strip that housed displaced civilians was also hit: At least 20 people killed. And on Thursday the office of the France Press Agency was bombed: no damage or injuries, but the AFP is the only one of the three main international news agencies to have a “live video” transmitting images from Gaza City. The footage was not interrupted despite the damage. An Israeli spokesman initially denied that troops had hit the building; then he clarified that he had carried out an attack but close to the building.
Meanwhile, while threats are coming from the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, but for now there has been no escalation, Israel’s offensive in the Strip continues while hope for a temporary ceasefire has faded after the refusal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants the hostages released first. The mediation efforts of the American Secretary of State, who arrived in Tel Aviv for the third time since the outbreak of the war and who will be in Amman today to meet the Arab countries and the Palestinians, were to no avail. “We continue the offensive with all our forces and Israel refuses a temporary truce that does not include the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu said after meeting with Blinken. Shortly after, the Pentagon confirmed that it is carrying out unmanned drone flights over the Strip to help Israel locate and free the 241 hostages taken by Hamas. Mediation with the Islamist movement, Biden administration sources confirmed, is “extremely long and complex” and would require a pause in the fighting. “We hope to deliver good news, but unfortunately we can’t guarantee it,” a White House source said.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said it does not support ceasefires, but has called for humanitarian “pauses.”, and Biden himself on Thursday evening asked that the weapons be silenced in order to free the hostages. Blinken, who also met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, assured that the United States will do “everything possible” to save the abductees. A position shared by the UN, the European Union, Canada and the Arab countries: confirmation that the allies are moving from unconditional support for Israeli self-defense to increasingly heightened concern for the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian Territories. The UN refugee agency, UNRWA, has warned that it cannot guarantee the safety of hundreds of thousands of people who have taken refuge in UN facilities because at this moment “there is no safe place” in the Strip.
Attack on Jabaliya, the bombs used and the US questions
The Biden administration has asked Israeli authorities to explain the attack on the Jabaliya refugee camp, located in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The Politico online site wrote this in the hours in which the New York Times claimed that Israel used two bombs weighing almost a ton each in that attack.
The newspaper relies on visual elements, such as satellite images, photos and videos; and notes that the craters left by the explosion measure approximately 12 meters in diameter. The Israeli army attacked the densely inhabited settlement in recent days, killing a Hamas leader who was there. According to Hamas sources, reported by the Israeli and Palestinian press, the victims were 195. The Israeli army later explained that the attack was aimed at a commander of the Hamas militia, who was killed together with fifty other hidden militiamen in the tunnels underneath the field. Israeli warplanes, sources in Gaza reported, dropped tons of explosives right into the tunnels, causing the destruction of the foundations of buildings in the area and the demolition of many buildings.
According to the New York Times, Israel’s use of such bombs, the second largest in its arsenal, is not uncommon: They can be used to target underground infrastructure, but their deployment in a densely populated area like Jabaliya “raises questions about the proportionality” of the response, in a densely populated urban context like Gaza, given the risk it poses to civilian lives.
Blinken in Amman: meets kings, Arab countries and Palestinians
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, arrived in Amman last night after leaving Israel where he failed to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to grant a humanitarian pause to get more aid into Gaza and facilitate the release of the hostages.
Today the head of US diplomacy meets the King of Jordan Abdullah II and will also participate in a meeting of the foreign ministers of five Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, in addition to the host country) in which a representative of the ‘Palestinian Authority, rival of Hamas.