UN agency says work in West Bank and Gaza will continue amid concerns over impact on delivery of aid
International staff working for the UN’s main agency serving Palestinians have been forced to leave after Israel’s ban on the agency came into effect.
As the UN flag was still flying above the headquarters building in Jerusalem, Palestinian staff were not present at the site over security concerns amid a planned “celebration” by Israeli rightwing groups outside the compound.
Continue reading...UK foreign secretary issues direct warning during phone call with Rwandan president after escalation of conflict
Rwanda has put $1bn of global aid under threat by taking part in the invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said.
He made the direct warning in a phone call to the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, on Sunday after also speaking to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, about the crisis.
Continue reading...Palestinians in war-devastated Gaza and occupied West Bank expected to be hardest hit by ban on refugee agency
The main UN agency serving Palestinians in the occupied territories, including Gaza, looks likely to be shut down on Thursday as Israel defied widespread international support for the agency in a move Unrwa predicted would “sabotage Gaza’s recovery and political transition”.
Unrwa’s banning looks certain, as Israel’s high court of justice refused a last-minute request to intervene to suspend the law forbidding the agency from operating in Israel.
Continue reading...Prediction by ex M16 counter-terror director comes as security paused around two main detention facilities
Donald Trump has thrown into doubt the security and administration of the main two detention facilities in north-east Syria that hold thousands of Islamic State fighters, the former counter-terrorism director of M16 Richard Barrett says.
The state of limbo has been caused in the short term by the US president unexpectedly suspending all USAid funding for 90 days, and by long-term uncertainty over his willingness to retain troops in Syria.
Continue reading...UN agency ordered to vacate HQ by Thursday – just as aid is being increased to Gaza after ceasefire
Israel has insisted it will not back down over its plan to close down the Gaza operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), the UN relief agency for Palestinians, even though critics say the move will jeopardise urgent humanitarian aid efforts.
Israel has ordered the UN agency to vacate its headquarters in East Jerusalem by Thursday, after the Israeli Knesset passed a law on 28 October banning its operations in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It has not yet said how it will implement a related law ending all Israeli government cooperation with Unwra, which could come into force on the same day and strangle its operations in the West Bank and Gaza.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands are now set to return to whatever remains of their houses or to claim bodies from the rubble
Aid agencies in Gaza are bracing for chaotic scenes this week as hundreds of thousands of people try to return to homes in the territory after the expected implementation of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Sunday.
Before the ceasefire, which is due to begin at 8.30am local time, Israel has continued to carry out attacks inside Gaza. The local health ministry claimed on Saturday that 23 Palestinians had been killed in the previous 24 hours, while the Israeli army said it had conducted strikes on 50 “terror targets” on Friday.
Continue reading...Agreement to surge aid to Gaza shows Israel has been controlling access, lawyers and humanitarian groups say
A provision to increase the aid entering Gaza under the ceasefire is welcome but insufficient, and shows Israel could have allowed more food, medicine and other supplies into the strip during the war, humanitarian and legal experts have said.
The deal agreed this week allows for 600 trucks a day of aid to enter Gaza, where nine out of 10 Palestinians are going hungry and experts warn that famine is imminent in areas. Israel faces accusations it is using starvation as a weapon of war.
Continue reading...Royal College of Nursing says Labour has a duty to fix health ‘double whammy’ by raising aid and funding for UK nursing
The UK cut health aid to some of the world’s vulnerable countries at the same time as recruiting thousands of their nurses, in a “double whammy” for fragile health systems, new analysis has found.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which carried out the research, said Labour had a “duty to fix” aid cuts imposed by the previous government, and to work on increasing the UK’s domestic supply of nurses.
Continue reading...Unrwa senior officer describes 60,000 people sheltering in school buildings sharing 12 bathrooms, but says without aid things will get worse
Social order in Gaza is likely to collapse further if Israel goes ahead with its threat this month to end all cooperation with the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, Louise Wateridge, its senior emergency officer, has warned.
Wateridge, who has just returned from Gaza, described the territory as increasingly fractured and said the two Knesset bills due to come into force at the end of the month blocking cooperation with the agency would make it impossible for Unrwa to operate or to distribute aid in a war zone.
Continue reading...Singer urged Tony Blair not to appoint African co-chair to commission on aid, UK government papers show
The Live Aid campaigner Bob Geldof urged Tony Blair not to appoint an African co-chair to the UK-led organisation working to overhaul international aid to the continent because he thought African leadership was “very weak” on the issue, newly released government documents suggest.
The singer was “scathing about the ability and worthiness of virtually all African leaders” before the establishment in 2004 of Blair’s Commission for Africa, which would produce a report, Our Common Interest, and prompt a landmark pledge by rich nations to boost aid and write off debt.
Continue reading...Recent attack on trucks carrying flour has deprived starving civilians of food as territory teeters on edge of famine
Aid officials and witnesses have described the chaotic and violent moments when a huge convoy carrying enough flour to bake bread for two-thirds of the population of Gaza for a week was looted this month.
The officials made clear the attack was undertaken by groups of criminals, not civilians who were now being deprived of food in a territory close to famine.
Continue reading...For the first time in over 30 years Médicins Sans Frontières halts activity leaving 2 million people in Port-au-Prince without vital healthcare
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said its aid workers are “heartbroken” after the medical NGO was forced to suspend all of its healthcare services in Port-au-Prince for the first time in three decades, leaving Haitians in the violence-ravaged capital without a critical lifeline.
The international non-profit said it had no choice but to halt all operations on Wednesday after staff were repeatedly attacked and received death threats from armed vigilantes and the national police.
Continue reading...WHO says hijacking by armed men has aggravated already severe scarcity of food, medicine and other aid
Food prices have soared in Gaza after the looting of nearly 100 aid trucks amid an already severe food crisis caused by more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas.
This weekend’s hijacking of 98 lorries of a 109-strong convoy by armed men – the biggest such attack to date – has aggravated food, medicine and other aid shortages, according to a World Health Organization spokesperson, Margaret Harris. “It’s getting harder and harder to get the aid in,” she said on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Hamas-run interior ministry says it carried out security operation after armed looters hijacked almost 100 trucks
Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry has said that at least 20 people have been killed in an operation targeting “gangs” accused of looting trucks bringing aid into the war-torn territory which is facing the threat of famine.
Gunmen attacked and looted about 100 trucks carrying desperately needed supplies over the weekend, the biggest such attack during 13 months of war in the territory and new evidence of the growing power of Gaza’s criminal gangs.
Continue reading...Images released by MSF doctors highlight impact of conflict in the country, with medical supplies and aid unable to reach people due to fighting
A series of X-rays showing a piece of shrapnel buried deep inside a 20-month-old girl’s head and a bullet embedded in an 18-month-old boy’s chest are among images released by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) revealing the impact of the war in Sudan on children.
The two babies were treated at Khartoum’s Bashair teaching hospital.
Continue reading...This live blog is closed
The US wants real and extended pauses in fighting in Gaza so assistance can get to people who need it, US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told reporters on Wednesday.
More details to follow …
Continue reading...Head of the Norwegian Refugee Council calls for peace process to begin as new figures reveal civilians have borne the brunt of the war
Nearly 70% of the people killed in the war in Gaza are women and children, according to a UN analysis of verified deaths that highlights the heavy civilian toll of the ongoing conflict.
In a new report, the most detailed analysis of its kind yet, the UN human rights office said it had verified 8,119 of those killed during the first six months of the war in Gaza. Of the fatalities, 3,588 were children and 2,036 were women. The youngest victim was a one-day-old boy and the oldest was a 97-year-old woman.
Continue reading...Country’s allies and aid workers say move could cripple services for Palestinians who increasingly depend on them
Israel has formally informed the United Nations of its intention to sever ties entirely with the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees in a move the country’s allies and aid workers warn will deepen the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East.
The Knesset passed two bills last week banning Unrwa from Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli state contact with the agency on the basis of allegations that Hamas had infiltrated it.
Continue reading...Nearly half of those killed were reported to be in northern Gaza, where the IDF has been conducting an intense assault
There are mounting concerns over whether the Israeli government’s ultimate war aims in Gaza include territorial expansion, as the IDF’s siege on the northern part of the territory – under sweeping evacuation orders - intensifies.
Here is an extract from a report by my colleagues Malak A Tantesh and Julian Borger, who explore these concerns further:
The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.
The plan, named after the retired senior officers promoting it, was intended to depopulate northern Gaza by giving the Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those that stayed as combatants, laying total siege.
Continue reading...Increasingly violent siege of north raises suspicions about Netanyahu’s war aims
Israel has tightened its siege of northern Gaza in the face of warnings from the UN and other aid agencies that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives at are risk, raising questions over whether the Netanyahu government’s ultimate war aims include territorial expansion.
The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.
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