2023-10-14 15:58:34
On the seventh day of war, the Israeli Army bombed the surroundings of several border cities in southern Lebanon this Friday, according to two Lebanese security sources, after the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah announced that it was prepared to join Hamas.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Army issued an ultimatum to the Gaza Strip in the morning in which it urged its entire civilian population in the north to leave for the south within 24 hours in order to intensify its offensive. This involves the displacement of more than 1.1 million Gazans, half of the population. Given this, and despite Hamas’s instruction to remain in their homes, thousands of people grabbed their belongings and began to travel, by car or on foot, the main artery that runs through the Strip from north to south.
In turn, Israeli troops continued their retaliation after the surprise attack by Hamas last Saturday in which more than 1,300 Israelis died and 3,400 were hospitalized, according to the latest figures provided by local authorities. The Israeli airstrikes this Friday, which occurred simultaneously with the launch of more rockets from Gaza, raised the number of Palestinian deaths in the Strip to more than 1,900 and 7,700 injured.
Tension with Lebanon
One of the Lebanese security sources reported that the bombing occurred after an “infiltration attempt” into Israel. There was gunfire on the border after the attempt, said Al-Manar, the Lebanese Hezbollah television channel. The Israeli Army said in a statement that it had fired artillery fire in Lebanese territory after an explosion that caused “slight damage” to the border fence.
The Israeli bombings targeted the towns of Dhayra, where they hit a Lebanese Army post, and Alma al Shaab, said the second security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
The attack on Lebanon comes after the number two of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah announced that they were prepared to join Hamas. “We are fully prepared, and when the time comes to act, we will do so,” warned Hezbollah Undersecretary General Naim Qassem, present at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. The “direct or indirect contacts of the great powers, the Arab countries and the UN envoys, asking us not to intervene in the battle, will not affect us,” he asserted.
The Israeli ultimatum
Israel gave Doctors Without Borders (MSF) eight hours to evacuate the Al Awda hospital in Gaza City, this organization reported after a first warning in which they only had two hours to complete it. “They have now delayed the demand to evacuate the Al Awda hospital in the Gaza Strip until 6 in the morning. The evacuation of patients remains complicated,” the NGO announced on the social network of indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on healthcare in Gaza. We are trying to protect our staff and our patients,” the organization said after receiving the first ultimatum.
All UN humanitarian organizations asked Israel to cancel its evacuation order “to avoid transforming what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation,” according to an official statement. Like the rest of the Gazan population, all United Nations personnel are affected by the measure, as well as the 440,000 displaced people who sought refuge in the schools and other facilities that the organization managed in that Palestinian territory. The UN so far estimates that 23 humanitarian workers have died in the offensive against Gaza. Eleven were health personnel and twelve employees of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
The Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas, also expressed his disagreement with the Israeli warning during a meeting with the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and warned that a massive displacement of the population could lead to a “second Nakba”, the name used to refer to the exodus of some 760,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war, which coincided with the creation of Israel.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia joined the rejections. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry denounced in a statement that “this measure constitutes a serious violation of the norms of international humanitarian law,” while the Saudi kingdom explained in a note that it is necessary to “stop all forms of military escalation against civilians, prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and provide necessary relief and medicine to Gaza residents.”
Raid and dead hostages
Israeli forces also carried out ground incursions into the Strip. “In the last 24 hours, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) carried out raids against specific locations within the territory of the Gaza Strip to clear the area of terrorists and weapons,” a military statement said, adding that these operations They also intended to “locate missing people.” The soldiers also “dismantled terrorist cells and infrastructure,” including a “Hamas cell that fired anti-tank missiles in the direction” of Israel, the letter said.
This occurred during a day in which Hamas assured in a statement that 13 of its hostages died in the last hours due to intense Israeli bombing, which includes a level of devastation of civil infrastructure and residential properties never seen in previous wars, and a situation on the verge of humanitarian collapse due to the total siege of Israel.
For days now, the Israeli Government has been preventing access to water, fuel, electricity and any type of goods within Gaza. He also vetoed the entry of humanitarian material into the enclave from the border with Egypt and took the hospital centers to a situation of maximum emergency due to the shortage of medicines, medical supplies and basic health products.
white phosphorus
The Gaza Interior Ministry reported that at least 70 people were killed and more than 200 injured after an Israeli bombardment against a convoy of displaced people on the Saladin highway, the main traffic route through the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported on its Facebook profile that a children’s hospital in the east of the Palestinian enclave had to be evacuated after an attack with white phosphorus projectiles. During an interview with the American network CNN, IDF spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, denied its use, without giving more details about it.
White phosphorus is a chemical substance that catches fire on contact with air and is part of several legal munitions to produce smoke screens or mark targets, but it produces very serious wounds that are difficult to treat and often fatal if it comes into contact with the skin.
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday that it had verified videos taken on Wednesday in Gaza that showed multiple mid-air explosions of the substance fired from artillery over the city’s port. At the same time, he warned in a writing that the use of this weapon in “densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under International Humanitarian Law to take all feasible precautions to avoid injury and loss of civilian life.”
Inform: Axel Schwarzfeld
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