Child casualties in Gaza a ‘stain on our collective conscience,’ Unicef says
The rate of death and injuries of children in Gaza is “simply staggering,” Unicef’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa has said, urging both sides to agree to an immediate ceasefire and to allow aid in to the enclave.
Adele Khodr said the number of child casualties were a “growing stain on our collective conscience”, adding:
The killing and maiming of children, abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, and the denial of humanitarian access constitute grave violations of children’s rights.
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UNICEF urgently appeals on all parties to agree to a ceasefire, allow humanitarian access and release all hostages. Even wars have rules. Civilians must be protected – children particularly – and all efforts must be made to spare them in all circumstances.
In its statement, the UN’s children’s organisation said that a reported 2,360 children had been killed in Gaza and a reported 5,364 injured due to “unrelenting attacks” since the conflict erupted on 7 October after Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Death tolls from Gaza are provided by the Hamas-run health ministry and are difficult to verify.
It also noted more than 30 Israeli children have reportedly lost their lives, and that dozens remain in captivity within the Gaza Strip, after they were taken hostage by Hamas.
Key events
A Palestinian American woman whose 6-year-old son was killed in a Chicago suburb in what police called a hate crime has asked the public to “pray for peace” as she recovers from her injuries, Associated Press reports.
Hanaan Shahin thanked authorities, doctors and others and remembered her son Wadea Al-Fayoume as an intelligent and funny child who cared about the planet and liked to join her in prayers.
She said she felt comforted “remembering her son as an angel on earth, and knowing that he is now an angel in heaven.” She added, “He was my best friend.”
The written statement marked her first public comments since the 14 October attack in which her son was killed and which left her with more than a dozen stab wounds.
Authorities said the family’s suburban Chicago landlord singled them out because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas.
UNRWA says operations will halt on Wednesday night due to lack of fuel
The UN’s agency for the relief of Palestinian refugees last night warned it would be forced to halt its operations in Gaza due to a lack of fuel as of Wednesday night.
In response, Israel’s military posted a picture of what it said were fuel tanks inside Gaza. “They contain more than 500,000 liters of fuel,” it wrote. “Ask Hamas if you can have some.”
UNRWA’s director general Philippe Lazzarini had already warned on Sunday that the organisation’s fuel would run out on Wednesday.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries. Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance. No fuel will further strangle the children, women and people of Gaza,” he said.
Rafqa Touma
A bit more from Australia’s National Press Club, where Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon has been answering questions from journalists.
Guardian Australia’s Daniel Hurst asked Maimon about a “pathway to peace”.
Hurst asked:
How do you see hope to be given to the people of Israel and the Palestinian people, to be able to live in security behind secure borders?
I would like you to ask you to reflect on prime minister Netanyahu at the UN in September who held up a map of the new Middle East, and it just showed Israel without any Palestinian territories.
Maimon answered:
I am young enough to remember the 1960s and the 1970s and they were times where we were very, very close, the Palestinians and the Israelis. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were working in Israel, in construction, in tourism and many other sectors. We were very close.
I believe that the past experience proved that there is a possibility that at the end of this war or in the not too far future the two parties will find a way to bridge the gap.
Once again, it is not going to take place in a week’s time, it is a very long process and a process in which we need to build bridges. Human bridges. We need to talk about the role of education, we need to talk about children, we need to talk about women and, yes, I am still very optimistic that it is doable. Because as I said before, I don’t think that we have any other alternative.
On Tuesday the friends and family of Dana Bachar and her son Carmel mourned their loss at Gan Shlomo cemetery. The pair were killed during Hamas’ 7 October attack on kibbutz Be’eri.
Rafqa Touma
The Israeli ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, has been addressing the country’s National Press Club in Canberra.
Guardian Australia’s Daniel Hurst asked:
I want to take you to a statement made a few days after the inexcusable, horrific attacks by Hamas. The IDF spokesperson said on October 10 that hundreds of tons of bombs had already been dropped on the Gaza Strip, adding that the emphasis is on the damage, not on accuracy.
The same day, the defence minister said that he ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip and there will be no electricity, food, fuel, everything is closed. ‘We are fighting human animals and are acting accordingly’. I want to draw you out on how those statements are consistent with international humanitarian law?
Maimon replied:
I just reviewed the current situation and I think the current situation is in line and in full compliance with the international law …
I attended a military briefing yesterday and received updated information and I’m sharing with you information I received yesterday.
Hurst:
And to be clear, you are saying that Israel is fully compliant with international humanitarian law?
Maimon:
Absolutely.
Florida’s university system, working with Governor Ron DeSantis, has ordered colleges to shut down a pro-Palestinian student organization, marking the first US state to outlaw the group whose national leadership backed Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Reuters reports:
The State University System of Florida said chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had to be dismantled as part of a “crack down” in the Republican-led state on campus demonstrations that provide “harmful support for terrorist groups.”
“Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated,” the system’s Chancellor Ray Rodrigues wrote in a memo to university leaders.
SJP is active in at least two Florida universities, Rodrigues said.
The University of North Florida in Jacksonville and Florida State University in Tallahassee have SJP chapters, based on Instagram sites. The National SJP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tensions between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students have led to harassment and assaults at US universities since Hamas’ 7 October attack and Israel‘s siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Administrators at some US universities criticized the National SJP after it called Hamas’ attack “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance” and called for a “day of resistance” on 12 October with demonstrations by its chapters at over 200 colleges in America and Canada.
Here are some of the latest images coming to us from Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, where people have been taken after Israeli strikes on the area:
Three killed in Israeli drone attack on West Bank refugee camp, medics say
Three people were killed, medics have said, after the Israeli military launched a drone attack on what it said was a group of armed Palestinians who “fired and hurled explosive devices”.
More than 20 others were injured in the attack, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, citing Wissam Bakr, director of Jenin governmental hospital. It said at least two missiles were fired at the group.
AFP reports further:
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had carried out “counterterrorism activities” in the area, but did not mention casualties.
It said it was responding to an attack from what it called “armed terrorists”, who “fired and hurled explosive devices at Israeli security forces”.
In response, it said, one of its attack drones had “struck the terrorists. Hits were identified.”
“No injuries to Israeli security forces were reported.”
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA says at least 95 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Israel declared war on Hamas in Gaza earlier this month.
Child casualties in Gaza a ‘stain on our collective conscience,’ Unicef says
The rate of death and injuries of children in Gaza is “simply staggering,” Unicef’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa has said, urging both sides to agree to an immediate ceasefire and to allow aid in to the enclave.
Adele Khodr said the number of child casualties were a “growing stain on our collective conscience”, adding:
The killing and maiming of children, abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, and the denial of humanitarian access constitute grave violations of children’s rights.
UNICEF urgently appeals on all parties to agree to a ceasefire, allow humanitarian access and release all hostages. Even wars have rules. Civilians must be protected – children particularly – and all efforts must be made to spare them in all circumstances.
In its statement, the UN’s children’s organisation said that a reported 2,360 children had been killed in Gaza and a reported 5,364 injured due to “unrelenting attacks” since the conflict erupted on 7 October after Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Death tolls from Gaza are provided by the Hamas-run health ministry and are difficult to verify.
It also noted more than 30 Israeli children have reportedly lost their lives, and that dozens remain in captivity within the Gaza Strip, after they were taken hostage by Hamas.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict with me, Helen Livingstone.
Three Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, medics have said, after the Israeli military launched a drone strike on a group it said were armed and “hurling explosive devices”.
The strike was at least the third use of Israeli air power in the West Bank since violence in the territory surged after Hamas’ rampage in southern Israel on 7 October and comes amid fears that violence in the territory may further ignite.
The Israeli air force meanwhile intensified airstrikes on Gaza on Tuesday, launching 400 over the past day, up from 320 the day before, including on the south where it had told civilians to evacuate.
Unicef said the huge number of child casualties in the enclave was “growing stain on our collective conscience” and called for an immediate ceasefire and for all crossings into Gaza to be opened to allow aid in.
“The rate of death and injuries of children [is] simply staggering,” Adele Khodr, Unicef’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa said.
In other developments:
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Israel has called on UN secretary general António Guterres to resign after Guterres said that the“appalling attacks” by Hamas against Israel on 7 October cannot justify the “collective punishment of the Palestinian people”. The attack on Israel did not happen “in a vacuum” and followed “56 years of suffocating occupation” for the Palestinian people by Israel, he said.
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Guterres warned that the situation in the Middle East is getting more dire by the hour. In remarks made at a UN security council meeting Tuesday in New York, Guterres called for an immediate ceasefire and warned that conflict could spill out into other parts of the region.
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Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said Guterres should resign, calling the speech “shocking”. He said it showed that the UN leader was “completely disconnected from the reality in our region and that he views the massacre committed by Nazi Hamas terrorists in a distorted and immoral manner”.
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The Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki, a rival of Hamas, denounced inaction by the UN security council. “The ongoing massacres being deliberately and systematically and savagely perpetrated by Israel – the occupying power against the Palestinian civilian population under illegal occupation – must be stopped. It is our collective human duty to stop them,” he said.
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The US and Russia put forward rival plans at the United Nations to help Palestinian civilians. Both countries seek UN security council resolutions to address shortages of food, water, medical supplies and electricity in Gaza. But the US, which opposes a ceasefire, has called only for pauses to allow aid to enter Gaza, while Russia wants a humanitarian ceasefire.
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The Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, said Israeli airstrikes killed hundreds of people over the past day, mostly women and children. A spokesperson for the ministry, Ashraf al-Qidra, said they had received 1,550 reports of missing people, including 870 children, and suggested that those missing could still be under the rubble of collapsed buildings. The claim could not be independently verified.
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Israel further intensified airstrikes on Gaza on Tuesday, launching 400 over the past day, up from 320 the day before, including on the south where it had told civilians to evacuate. It said it killed Hamas commanders, and hit militants as they prepared to fire rockets into Israel as well as striking command centers and a Hamas tunnel shaft. The Israeli military also said it thwarted an assault by a group of Hamas underwater divers who tried to infiltrate Israel on a beach just north of Gaza.
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Hospitals in Gaza are ceasing to function because they are running out of water and fuel for generators, while being overwhelmed by huge numbers of casualties and civilians seeking shelter from Israeli bombing. Doctors, health administrators and international aid organisations described nightmarish conditions, including doctors forced to operate with little or no anaesthesia, or by the light of mobile phones, and using vinegar in some cases in place of antiseptic
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Eight aid trucks were allowed into Gaza late Tuesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said as US President Joe Biden said efforts to deliver help via a crossing from Egypt were “not fast enough”. The UN had earlier said about 20 trucks had been unable to cross into Gaza from Egypt via the Rafah crossing.
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US secretary of state Antony Blinken said countries should still send humanitarian aid to Palestine during remarks made at the UN security council. “We call on all countries” to send humanitarian aid to Gaza, he said. “A civilian is a civilian is a civilian,” Blinken said, adding that Palestinian civilians “must be protected”.
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Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the military was “ready and determined” for the next stage in the conflict, adding that they are awaiting further political instruction.
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In a joint media appearance with the French president, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, threatened “horrible consequences” for Hezbollah in Lebanon if it decided to join the war in a meaningful way. Netanyahu said Hamas must be destroyed and warned that the war may take some time. He said that after it was finished, nobody would live “under Hamas tyranny”.
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Emmanuel Macron called for the release of hostages and said terrorism was a common enemy of Israel and France. He said terrorism must be fought without mercy but with rules.
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The Australian government is sending a “significant contingent” of aircraft and supporting troops to the Middle East on standby in the event “this gets worse”, the acting prime minister and defence minister, Richard Marles, said, without giving exact details about how many troops would be sent or where they would be based.
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US officials are developing a contingent plan to evacuate Americans from the Middle East in case conflict spreads to the broader region amid fighting in Gaza. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby stressed that while there are no “active efforts” to evacuate Americans outside charter planes flying out of Israel, it would be “irresponsible” not to plan for a broad range of possibilities.
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Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, who was released by Hamas on Monday after being kidnapped in the 7 October attack on Israel said she had “been through hell” at a press conference. She told reporters she was captured by Hamas fighters on motorbikes, beaten with sticks and forced to walk. She went on to describe conditions in the tunnels where she had been held, where she said people treated her “gently” and “looked after our needs”.