Latest news with #Khan Younis
Al Mayadeen
13 hours ago
- Health
- Al Mayadeen
Starved and slaughtered: Palestinians bombed at Gaza food 'aid site'
In one of the most harrowing massacres to date, Israeli occupation forces conducted a mass killing of starved Palestinians awaiting food aid in Khan Younis early Tuesday morning, killing more than 60 Palestinians and injuring over 200 others, including at least 20 in critical condition. The attack, confirmed by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, struck near the al-Tahlia roundabout, a known distribution point for dwindling humanitarian relief. Survivors described scenes of utter horror: children torn apart by shrapnel, bloodied bodies strewn among plastic bags of flour. Emergency, intensive care, and operating room departments are experiencing severe overcrowding with the influx of deaths and injuries, the Ministry revealed, highlighting the increasingly catastrophic situation of the healthcare system in the Strip. It revealed that medical teams are operating with limited supplies of life-saving medications and supplies, renewing its urgent appeal to all relevant authorities to increase relevant aid. Concurrently, Al Mayadeen's correspondent reported that two Palestinians were killed by Israeli occupation forces near Street 10 in southern Gaza City. In a separate tragedy, an Israeli airstrike on Old Gaza Street in Jabalia, northern Gaza, killed a young Palestinian girl. #WATCH | Footage shows the aftermath of a massacre committed by the Israeli occupation, whereby 45 #Palestinians were martyred and hundreds were wounded as Israeli occupation forces targeted aid seekers, east of Khan Younis, southern #Gaza. total number of Palestinians killed across the Gaza Strip since dawn has climbed to 64, as Israeli forces continue to intensify attacks on civilians. Many of the victims were targeted while attempting to access humanitarian aid, with additional deaths and injuries reported in the north of the Strip during aid distribution. As Gaza's healthcare system teeters on collapse, Nasser Medical Complex, the main hospital in Khan Younis, struggles to absorb the influx of victims. Emergency rooms overflowed, surgeons worked without anesthesia, and corridors filled with the cries of grieving families. Doctors, already working on skeleton staff and minimal supplies, reported dozens of life-threatening injuries and warned that many more may succumb to injuries in the coming hours without urgent intervention. Even as scenes of carnage emerge daily from across Gaza, Western governments remain largely unshaken in their support. The US administration continues to funnel weapons and political cover. European capitals issue statements of 'concern' while abstaining from meaningful action. And the UN, constrained and defanged, pleads powerlessly. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced on Tuesday that hospitals received the bodies of 61 martyrs, including six retrieved from under the rubble, and 397 injuries over 24 hours. Many victims remain trapped beneath debris and along roads, unreachable due to continued bombardment. Since October 7, 2023, as of June 16, 2025, the death toll of the Israeli genocide in Gaza has surged to 55,493 Palestinians killed and 129,320 injured. Since March 18, 2025, the total toll has risen to 5,194 killed and 17,279 wounded. Moreover, as the Israeli-made famine looms over Gaza, 59 starved Palestinians were killed since early morning, and over 200 were injured while trying to receive aid at designated 'aid distribution sites' and were later transported to hospitals, as per the Ministry's report. The death toll among Palestinians killed while seeking food aid in designated distribution zones has now climbed to 397, with more than 3,031 others wounded, according to the report.
Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Israel bombards Gaza, killing 78, as truce talks stall
Israeli forces have continued to pound the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least 78 Palestinians, including several aid seekers, as ceasefire talks stall amid a deepening fuel and hunger crisis. An Israeli attack near an aid distribution point in Rafah in southern Gaza killed at least five people who were seeking aid on Monday, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. The killings raised the death toll of Palestinians killed near aid sites run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to 838, according to Wafa. In Khan Younis, also in southern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a displacement camp killed nine people and wounded many others. In central Gaza's Bureij refugee camp, four people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a commercial centre, Wafa said. Israeli forces also resumed stepping up attacks in northern Gaza and Gaza City. Israeli media reported an ambush in Gaza City, with a tank hit by rocket fire and later, with small arms. A helicopter was seen evacuating casualties. The Israeli military later confirmed that three soldiers were killed in the incident. Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Israeli forces responded with 'massive air strikes in the vicinity of [the] Tuffah and Shujayea neighbourhoods, levelling residential buildings'. The Wafa news agency said at least 24 Palestinians were killed in Gaza City and dozens more were wounded. The attacks come as UN agencies continue to plead for more aid to be allowed into Gaza, where famine looms and a severe fuel shortage has brought the already battered healthcare sector to its knees. Gaza's water crisis has also intensified since Israel blocked nearly all fuel shipments into the enclave on March 2. With no fuel, desalination plants, wastewater treatment facilities and pumping stations have largely shut down. Egypt's foreign minister said on Monday that the flow of aid into Gaza has not increased despite an agreement last week between Israel and the European Union that should have had that result. 'Nothing has changed [on the ground],' Badr Abdelatty told reporters ahead of the EU-Middle East meeting in Brussels. 'A real catastrophe' The EU's top diplomat said on Thursday that the bloc and Israel agreed to improve Gaza's humanitarian situation, including increasing the number of aid trucks and opening crossing points and aid routes. When asked what steps Israel has taken, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar referred to an understanding with the EU but did not provide details on the implementation. Asked if there were improvements after the agreement, Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Safadi told reporters that the situation in Gaza remains 'catastrophic'. 'There is a real catastrophe happening in Gaza resulting from the continuation of the Israeli siege,' he said. Meanwhile, stuttering ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with mediators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas. The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear to still remain deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of captives and a 60-day ceasefire. An official with knowledge of the talks said they were 'ongoing' in Doha on Monday, the AFP news agency reported. 'Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza,' the source reportedly said. 'Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,' the source added on condition of anonymity. Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he wants to see the Palestinian group destroyed, of being the main obstacle. 'Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,' the group wrote on Telegram. Netanyahu is under growing pressure to end the war, with military casualties rising and public frustration mounting. He also faces backlash over the feasibility and ethics of a plan to build a so-called 'humanitarian city' from scratch on the ruins of southern Gaza's Rafah to house 600,000 Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold. Israel's security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said amounts to plans for a 'concentration camp'.
Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
At least 72 killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza as truce talks stall
Israeli forces have continued to pound the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least 72 Palestinians, including several aid seekers, as ceasefire talks stall amid a deepening fuel and hunger crisis. An Israeli attack near an aid distribution point in Rafah in southern Gaza killed at least five people who were seeking aid on Monday, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. The killings raised the death toll of Palestinians killed near aid sites run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to 838, according to Wafa. In Khan Younis, also in southern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a displacement camp killed nine people and wounded many others. In central Gaza's Bureij refugee camp, four people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a commercial centre, Wafa said. Israeli forces also resumed stepping up attacks in northern Gaza and Gaza City. Israeli media reported an ambush in Gaza City, with a tank hit by rocket fire and later, with small arms. A helicopter was seen evacuating casualties. The Israeli military later confirmed that three soldiers were killed in the incident. Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Israeli forces responded with 'massive air strikes in the vicinity of [the] Tuffah and Shujayea neighbourhoods, levelling residential buildings'. The Wafa news agency said at least 24 Palestinians were killed in Gaza City and dozens more were wounded. The attacks come as UN agencies continue to plead for more aid to be allowed into Gaza, where famine looms and a severe fuel shortage has brought the already battered healthcare sector to its knees. Gaza's water crisis has also intensified since Israel blocked nearly all fuel shipments into the enclave on March 2. With no fuel, desalination plants, wastewater treatment facilities and pumping stations have largely shut down. Egypt's foreign minister said on Monday that the flow of aid into Gaza has not increased despite an agreement last week between Israel and the European Union that should have had that result. 'Nothing has changed [on the ground],' Badr Abdelatty told reporters ahead of the EU-Middle East meeting in Brussels. 'A real catastrophe' The EU's top diplomat said on Thursday that the bloc and Israel agreed to improve Gaza's humanitarian situation, including increasing the number of aid trucks and opening crossing points and aid routes. When asked what steps Israel has taken, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar referred to an understanding with the EU but did not provide details on the implementation. Asked if there were improvements after the agreement, Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Safadi told reporters that the situation in Gaza remains 'catastrophic'. 'There is a real catastrophe happening in Gaza resulting from the continuation of the Israeli siege,' he said. Meanwhile, stuttering ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with mediators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas. The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear to still remain deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of captives and a 60-day ceasefire. An official with knowledge of the talks said they were 'ongoing' in Doha on Monday, the AFP news agency reported. 'Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza,' the source reportedly said. 'Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,' the source added on condition of anonymity. Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he wants to see the Palestinian group destroyed, of being the main obstacle. 'Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,' the group wrote on Telegram. Netanyahu is under growing pressure to end the war, with military casualties rising and public frustration mounting. He also faces backlash over the feasibility and ethics of a plan to build a so-called 'humanitarian city' from scratch on the ruins of southern Gaza's Rafah to house 600,000 Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold. Israel's security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said amounts to plans for a 'concentration camp'.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Our Médecins Sans Frontières staff are being killed in Gaza. Why are UK ministers enabling that?
Our colleague Abdullah Hammad was killed last week by Israeli forces as he waited to collect flour from an aid truck in Khan Younis. He is the 12th Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) colleague to have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. The Israeli-US food distribution scheme forces people in Gaza to choose between starvation and risking their life for minimal supplies. With more than 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme has had the effect of luring desperate people in with aid, only for them to be slaughtered by the Israeli armed forces. This is part of the genocide that is being committed in Gaza. And the UK government is complicit. At the beginning of April, we at MSF UK wrote to the foreign secretary, David Lammy, detailing our first-hand observations in Gaza. We described the massive influxes of wounded patients and dead bodies being received by MSF teams in medical facilities across Gaza on 18 March, as Israeli forces unleashed attacks of unprecedented intensity, shattering the short-lived ceasefire. We explained that MSF medical staff and their patients had already had to evacuate 17 health facilities and had endured a massive number of violent incidents, including airstrikes damaging and destroying hospitals and health facilities, tanks opening fire on humanitarian shelters, ground offensives being conducted in medical facilities, and humanitarian convoys and ambulances being fired upon by the Israeli military. We noted that not a single hospital in Gaza was currently fully functional, and that about half of them were no longer functioning at all. And we described the complete siege imposed by the Israeli authorities on Gaza. We noted that this evidence was consistent with the description of ethnic cleansing and genocide provided by legal experts and human rights organisations. We requested a meeting to brief the foreign secretary further and to hear what concrete actions the UK planned, to hold Israel to account for its atrocities against the Palestinian people. We did not receive a response. So on 7 May, MSF wrote an open letter to the prime minister describing the use of starvation and collective punishment as weapons of war by the Israeli government against an entire population. We implored the UK government to uphold its obligations as a permanent member of the UN security council to act under international humanitarian law to protect all civilians in Gaza. We also called on the UK government to publicly condemn the Israeli government for the atrocities it is inflicting on the people of Gaza. We warned that failure to take immediate action and to adopt a clear position on these extensively documented and flagrant war crimes and breaches of international law would leave the UK government at high risk of charges of complicity. We did not receive a response. In fact, since 1 November 2023 we have repeatedly contacted the government to provide evidence of atrocities directly witnessed and experienced by our hundreds of colleagues in Gaza, to remind the UK of its power and its obligation to act, and to request an urgent high-level meeting. We never received clear acknowledgment of the evidence that we have provided, nor have we ever been offered that meeting. We can only conclude that the UK government just does not want to admit what everybody else can see: that genocide is being committed in Gaza, and it is being committed with the military, diplomatic and material support of the UK. Eventually, on 23 June, we did receive a letter from the parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer. It was woefully inadequate and did not address any of our points. It said only: 'We need further action from the Israeli government now to lift all restrictions on aid, to enable the UN and aid partners to do their work, and to ensure that food and other critical supplies can reach people safely.' But aid will not stop a genocide. We also need the Israeli government to stop the ethnic cleansing, the war crimes and the crimes against humanity, and to abide by international law and the advice of the international court of justice (ICJ). Since October 2023, the entire population of the Gaza Strip has been subjected to relentless bombardment by the Israeli armed forces. Gaza's healthcare system has been destroyed, and medical workers, including our MSF colleagues, are systematically targeted by the Israeli military. Due to the siege imposed by Israel and the obstruction of humanitarian aid, more than 2 million people are currently on the brink of starvation as part of a calculated strategy aimed at eradicating Palestinian society. The UK government must acknowledge and respect the rulings of the ICJ, and abide by international law and the advisory of the ICJ regarding the plausibility of genocide. MSF has a responsibility to act with moral clarity and humanitarian consistency in the face of mass atrocities. The same should apply to the UK government. Dr Natalie Roberts is the executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières UK
BBC News
5 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
Gaza's largest functioning hospital facing disaster, medics warn, as Israel widens offensive
Doctors have warned of an imminent disaster at Gaza's largest functioning hospital because of critical shortage of fuel and a widening Israeli ground offensive in the southern city of Khan Medical Complex was forced to stop admitting patients on Thursday, when witnesses said Israeli troops and tanks advanced into a cemetery 200m (660ft) away and fired towards nearby camps for displaced families. The forces reportedly withdrew on Friday after digging up several staff and dozens of patients in intensive care remain inside the hospital, where the fuel shortage threatens to shut down life-saving was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. However, it said on Friday morning that an armoured brigade was operating in Khan Younis to dismantle "terrorist infrastructure sites" and confiscate weapons> It has previously issued evacuation orders for the areas around the hospital. A witness told the BBC that Israeli tanks accompanied by excavators and bulldozers advanced from the south of the cemetery near Nasser hospital on tanks fired shells and bullets as they moved into an area, which was previously farmland, and several tents belonging to displaced families were set on fire, the witness said. Video footage shared online showed a plume of dark smoke rising from the witness added that Israeli quadcopter drones also fired towards tents in the Namsawi Towers and al-Mawasi areas to force residents to evacuate. Another video showed dozens of people running for cover amid as gunfire rang or two civilians standing near the hospital's gates were reportedly injured by stray staff inside Nasser hospital meanwhile sent messages to local journalists expressing their fear. "We are still working in the hospital. The tanks are just metres away. We are closer to death than to life," they Friday morning, locals said the Israeli tanks and troops pulled out of the cemetery and other areas close to the hospital. Pictures shared online later in the day appeared to show deep trenches dug into the sandy ground, flattened buildings, burnt tents, and crushed vehicles piled on top of each other. Staff at Nasser hospital said they were assessing if they could resume admitting patients. On Wednesday, they warned that the hospital was very close to a complete shutdown due to a critical fuel said electricity generators were expected to function for one additional day despite significant efforts to reduce power consumption and restrict electricity to only the most critical departments, including the intensive care and neonatal the power went out completely, dozens of patients, particularly those dependent of ventilators, would "be in immediate danger and face certain death", the hospital Israeli military official told Reuters news agency on Thursday that around 160,000 litres of fuel destined for hospitals and other humanitarian facilities had entered Gaza since Wednesday, but that the fuel's distribution around the territory was not the responsibility of the is a shortage of critical medical supplies, especially those related to trauma a visit to Nasser hospital last week, the Gaza representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) described it as "one massive trauma ward". Dr Rik Peeperkorn said in a video that the facility, which normally has a 350-bed capacity, was treating about 700 patients, and that exhausted staff were working 24 hours a director and doctors reported receiving hundreds of trauma cases over the past four weeks, the majority of them linked to incidents around aid distribution sites, he added."There's many boys, young adolescents who are dying or getting the most serious injuries because they try to get some food for their families," he them were a 13-year-old boy who was shot in the head and is now tetraplegic, and a 21-year-old man who has a bullet lodged in his neck and is also Friday, 10 people seeking aid were reportedly killed by Israeli military fire near an aid distribution site in the nearby southern city of Rafah. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented. Meanwhile, in northern Gaza, a senior Hamas commander was among eight people who were killed in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced families in Jabalia, a local source told the Nasr, who led the Jabalia al-Nazla battalion, died alongside his family, including several children, and an aide when two missiles hit a classroom at Halima al-Saadia school, according to the Hamas commander, Hassan Marii, and his aide were reportedly killed in a separate air strike on an apartment in al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal could be just days away, after concluding his four-day trip to the flying back from Washington on Thursday night, he told Newsmax that the proposal would supposedly see Hamas release half of the 20 living hostages it is still holding and just over half of the 30 dead hostages during a 60-day truce."So, we'll have 10 living left and about 12 deceased hostages [remaining], but I'll get them out, too. I hope we can complete it in a few days," he a Palestinian official told the BBC that the indirect negotiations in Qatar were stalled, with sticking points including aid distribution and Israeli troop Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken least 57,762 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
