New Delhi:

At least 22 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis as fighting in the war-torn Gaza Strip continued on Thursday. Over 100 people were rescued from under the rubble of a family house and its surroundings in the city of Khan Yunis, which is in the south of Gaza.

Footages from the rescue operation showed a Gazan boy being rescued from rubble after his home was hit by an Israeli airstrike. The rescuers can be seen toiling in the ruins of the wrecked buildings trying to save the child.

According to the UN, about 1,600 people, including 900 children, have been reported missing and may be under the rubble in Gaza. As many as 481 people, including 209 kids, were killed over the past 24 hours, a UN report said.

About 45 per cent of housing units in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed (16,441), rendered uninhabitable (11,340), or moderately/lightly damaged (1,50,000), since the start of the hostilities, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Public Works and Housing.

Israel had told civilians in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12 to move to the south of the enclave, saying it would be safer there as its military attacked Hamas.

However, Israel has continued to hit sites in southern Gaza, spreading fear among the evacuees that they are just as vulnerable there as they were in their homes in the north. 

The bombardment of the south reportedly intensified on October 25 with a strike bringing down several apartment buildings in Khan Younis.

Israel has claimed that the Hamas operatives killed 1,400 people in their surprise cross-border attack on October 7, while Gaza’s health ministry has said that more than 7,000 Palestinians have died in air strikes since then.

Nowhere is safe in Gaza

As Israel continued its bombardment, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Lynne Hastings, said that “nowhere is safe in Gaza”. In a statement, she said that despite the Israeli military issuing warnings to people in Gaza City to leave, “advance warnings make no difference”.

“When the evacuation routes are bombed, when people north as well as south are caught up in hostilities when the essentials for survival are lacking, and when there are no assurances for return, people are left with nothing but impossible choices. Nowhere is safe in Gaza,” she said.

An estimated 1.4 million people in Gaza are internally displaced, with some 6,41,000 sheltering in 150 UN-designated emergency shelters.

Humanitarian aid arrives in Gaza

The Rafah crossing with Egypt opened for the sixth consecutive day on Thursday, allowing the entry of 12 trucks carrying water, food, and medical supplies. The total number of trucks with humanitarian aid that entered Gaza since October 21 have now increased to 74. 

The entry of fuel, however, remains banned by the Israeli authorities. 

Members of the U.S. Jewish community protest against the Israeli military operation in Gaza inside the Cannon building in the US Capitol in Washington, DC on October 18, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP

U.S. President Joe Biden will give a primetime speech on Thursday about the conflict between Israel and Hamas and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the White House said Wednesday.

Mr. Biden will speak at 8 p.m. (0000 GMT) in the Oval Office, from which presidents have traditionally addressed the nation at times of critical national importance.

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“Tomorrow, President Biden will address the nation to discuss our response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and Russia’s ongoing brutal war against Ukraine,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

The speech comes a day after Mr. Biden returns from a trip to Israel to show solidarity after the October 7 Hamas attack, and as he prepares to ask Congress for a joint $100 billion package that includes money for Ukraine, Israel and the southern U.S. border.

Mr. Biden, a Democrat, said in Tel Aviv on Wednesday that he would ask Congress for an “unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense” later this week.

The US Congress has been paralyzed by the absence of a speaker in the House of Representatives for more than two weeks.

And U.S. lawmakers rejected hard-line Republican Jim Jordan’s bid for speaker for a second time on Wednesday.

But the package is intended to bypass congressional chaos and bring Democrats, who have sought additional aid for Kyiv for weeks, together with Republicans, who want funds to tighten controls on the southern border with Mexico.

Support for Taiwan — the self-governing democracy which China claims and has not ruled out seizing by force — is also expected to be in the bill.

Mr. Biden recently called key allies to reassure them of continued U.S. military aid for Ukraine, even as the White House warned the flow would dry up in months if Congress blocks new funds.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Congress in September in a bid to convince Republicans to keep the aid coming and help his country ward off the Russian invasion.

Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The escalating tensions in Gaza have come under sharp focus in Sri Lanka, an island nation that is struggling to get out of its own devastating civil war, nearly 15 years after it ended.

While President Ranil Wickremesinghe recently called for a “four-state” solution involving Israel, Gaza, Palestine, and Lebanon, to resolve the crisis, he also shared his concerns with caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Tuesday. The regional leaders are currently in China to attend the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

According to an update posted by the Pakistani Prime Minister’s office on social media platform X, the two leaders expressed “deep concern at the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza caused by the ongoing Israeli attacks. They called for “immediate cessation of hostilities by Israel; establishment of a humanitarian corridor to provide aid to the besieged people of Gaza; and a two-state solution, resulting in the establishment of a viable and contiguous Palestinian State with pre-1967 borders and Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital”, the post said.

Expressing solidarity

Meanwhile, key political actors from different parties in Sri Lanka have voiced concern on the ongoing violence.

Leader of Opposition Sajith Premadasa has called for an urgent parliamentary debate on the issue, while observing that “state terrorism” was leading to “hundreds of deaths”. On Wednesday, Mr. Premadasa presented a motion urging the House to call upon the United Nations to convene its Security Council to end the ongoing conflict. Terming the hospital bombing in Gaza a “massacre”, he urged the permanent members of the UN to take necessary measures to stop the “ongoing terrorism and state terrorism”.

The Gaza hospital bombing comes days before Sri Lanka’s Tamils, who bore the brunt of island’s long civil war, commemorate the brutal attack on the Jaffna teaching hospital in 1987 by members of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). Some 70 civilians, including 21 medical personnel, were killed on October 21 and 22, 1987.

Prominent leaders have also visited the Palestinian Embassy in Colombo to express solidarity. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa emphasised the urgency of peace in his recent meeting with the Palestinian Ambassador, Mr. Rajapaksa’s office said. “I have consistently supported the Palestinian cause as the Founder and President of the Sri Lanka Society for Solidarity with Palestine. War is never a solution,” said Mr. Rajapaksa, whose government is accused of committing grave human rights violations during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war — fought between the armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — which claimed at least 40,000 civilian lives. He has consistently denied the allegations, contending that his forces’ actions were part of a “humanitarian operation”.

On Wednesday, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Member of Parliament and leader of the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) met the Palestinian Ambassador in Colombo to express solidarity. He sought the UN’s “fair intervention” and implementation of the two-state solution. Civic activists and rights defenders in Sri Lanka have also been organising protests in solidarity with Palestine over the last few days.

Muscat:

The Gulf Cooperation Council on Tuesday announced $100 million in emergency aid for the Gaza Strip, as Israel bombards targets in the enclave during its war against Hamas militants.

After an extraordinary meeting in Muscat, the bloc’s foreign ministers pledged “an urgent humanitarian relief operation” with “relief aid worth $100 million”.

The top diplomats of the six GCC countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — met as at least 200 people were killed in strikes on a Gaza hospital compound sheltering displaced people, said Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Israel blamed a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad, another Gaza-based militant group which has claimed to be fighting alongside Hamas.

After the Palestinian militants of Hamas burst through Israel’s heavily fortified Gaza border 11 days ago, shooting, mutilating and burning more than 1,400 people in southern Israel, Israel’s retaliatory bombing raids have killed around 3,000 Gazans.

The GCC meeting’s final statement stressed “the necessity of ensuring the urgent delivery of this aid” without specifying how it will get to Gaza.

In recent days, Gulf countries have sent plane-loads of assistance to Egypt’s El Arish, hoping to send it through the Rafah border point — Gaza’s only crossing that is not under Israeli control.

On Tuesday, hundreds of laden trucks headed along the 40-kilometre (25-mile) road from El Arish to Rafah, aid officials said.

So far Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing closed, both to aid going in and foreign nationals trying to flee, as Israel has repeatedly struck the Palestinian side of the crossing.

GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi “called on the international community to… demand an immediate halt to all forms of military escalation against defenceless civilians in Gaza”, an English statement on the GCC website said.

The international community must also “categorically reject any calls to forcibly displace the Palestinian people from Gaza, as this represents a violation of basic human rights and international principles”, it added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Tirana, Albania, on October 16, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

The European Union will launch a humanitarian air corridor to Gaza through Egypt with the first flights expected this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday.

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“Palestinians in Gaza are in need of humanitarian help and aid. That is why… we are launching an EU humanitarian air bridge to Gaza through Egypt. The first two flights will start this week,” Ms. von der Leyen told a press conference in the Albanian capital Tirana, where she attended a regional Balkan summit.

The operation is consisting of “several flights to Egypt to bring lifesaving supplies to humanitarian organisations on the ground in Gaza”, a statement from the Commission’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) department said.

The first two flights this week will be carrying humanitarian cargo from UNICEF including shelter items, medicines and hygiene kits, it said.

Earlier Monday, Egypt and France’s foreign ministers urged the delivery of humanitarian aid and the exit of foreign nationals from the bombarded Gaza Strip, as the war between Israel and Hamas entered its tenth day.

Israel has been at war since Gaza’s Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on October 7 in which its gunmen shot, stabbed and mutilated people in a surprise onslaught that shocked the nation.

The attack and fighting since have killed more than 1,400 in Israel, mainly civilians.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and responded with a heavy bombing campaign on Gaza that has killed around 2,750 people.

According to the United Nations, a million people have been displaced inside Gaza.

Ms. von der Leyen said that there could be “no justification for Hamas’ heinous act of terror.”

“In the face of this horror Israel has the right to defend itself in line with humanitarian and international law,” she said and stressed that Palestinians in Gaza “cannot pay the price of Hamas’ barbarism”.

She reminded that the EU was tripling humanitarian aid to 75 million euros ($79 million) for the Gaza Strip.

Washington:

US President Joe Biden weighed a trip to Israel while he cautioned against long-term Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, as the White House sought to balance support for the country with fears that the regional crisis could escalate. No decision about whether to travel to Israel had yet been made, according to two people familiar with the internal discussions, and a spokesperson for the National Security Council said the White House didn’t have a trip to announce.

But the possible trip – and acknowledgment of concerns voiced by Palestinians in Gaza and Arab leaders across the region – were the latest signal that the US was trying to keep the crisis from further escalating.

Biden stressed his belief that Israel would act by the rules of war and that innocent civilians would have access to medicine, food and water in an interview with CBS News’s “60 Minutes.” He also said he didn’t believe Israel should control the territory long-term, saying instead the territory should be governed by “a Palestinian authority.”

“I think it’d be a big mistake,” Biden said. “Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people.”

The interview, which aired Sunday night, came as Israeli Defense Forces were readying a ground invasion of Gaza, prompting hundreds of thousands of residents to flee south. The mass migration has prompted concerns of a humanitarian crisis, and Palestinian officials said more than 2,600 people in Gaza have been killed.

Frayed Relationship

Accepting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invitation – extended in a phone call Saturday – could both signal solidarity after the deadly Hamas attack and help jumpstart regional efforts to limit the scope of the conflict and provide humanitarian assistance.

Biden and the Israeli leader last met in September during the United Nations meetings in New York. Their relationship has been frayed this year amid Netanyahu’s effort to strip power from Israel’s judicial branch.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to return to Israel on Monday after meetings with Saudi and Egyptian leaders, and Axios reported that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has also invited Biden to an international conference regarding the conflict. Palestinian and Israeli leaders have been pushing Egypt to help mediate the conflict, and the US has pushed the country to open the Rafah border crossing.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also said Sunday that the US had conducted backchannel discussions with Iranian leaders to warn them against escalation.

Safe Zone

In his interview, Biden said his team had been discussing the establishment of a safe zone for Gaza residents, and held talks  with the Egyptian government about assistance in getting women and children out of the conflict zone.

“The Israelis are going to do everything in their power to avoid the killing of innocent civilians,” Biden said.

Biden stressed his belief that Israel needed to respond after the initial attack by Hamas, which killed at least 1,300 people – including 30 Americans – and left thousands more injured. The US president described last week’s attack as being “as consequential as the Holocaust.”

Biden reiterated in the interview that he didn’t see a reason for US troops to intervene directly in the situation, though he pressed lawmakers to provide additional military assistance to Israel and Ukraine. Biden said that dysfunction on Capitol Hill – where House Republicans for over a week have been unable to elect a new speaker to replace Kevin McCarthy – increased danger in the world.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)