Category Archives: Gaza

WHO delivers 1.2m polio vaccine doses to Gaza as pauses in fighting agreed

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Three-day humanitarian pauses in several areas planned to allow inoculation of more than 640,000 children

The World Health Organization has said it delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century.

The vaccinations, due to begin this weekend, will be accompanied by three-day pauses in the fighting in several areas of the territory to allow the inoculation of more than 640,000 children.

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Israeli military launches fatal airstrike on humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza

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IDF claims ‘armed assailants’ tried to hijack vehicle leading convoy of medical supplies, but aid organiser says those killed were transport company staff

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said they carried out an airstrike on a humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza aimed at “armed assailants” trying to hijack it but the charity that organised the aid said people killed in the strike were employees of the transport company it was working with.

The convoy, organised by the US-based NGO Anera, was carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah on Thursday evening at the time of the attack. Its route had been coordinated in advance with the IDF, under a deconfliction process intended to prevent aid vehicles being bombed.

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Special relationship at risk if UK bans arms sales to Israel, says Trump adviser

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Robert O’Brien says UK could face US counter-embargos and put its role in F-35 fighter jet project in danger

Labour risks a serious rift in the UK’s special relationship with the US if it goes ahead with a ban on arms sales to Israel, Donald Trump’s last national security adviser has warned.

Robert O’Brien, still one of the key security voices in the Trump circle, said the UK was endangering its future role in the F-35 project as well as facing the risk of US congressional counter-embargos. The F-35 fighter jets are made in part by British arms firms and are used by Israel’s air force as part of its bombing of Gaza.

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WHO says Israel has agreed pauses in Gaza fighting to allow polio vaccinations

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Tentative announcement follows Israeli PM approving designated places to treat estimated 640,000 children

The World Health Organization has announced it has “a preliminary commitment” for humanitarian pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of children against polio, with the first vaccinations to begin as early as this weekend.

The UN is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the UN’s global health body confirmed on 23 August that at least one baby has been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

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Five Palestinian fighters killed in West Bank mosque as Israeli assault continues

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Deaths in Tulkarm bring toll to 16 during Israel’s deadliest operation in West Bank since 7 October Hamas attack

The Israeli military said it had killed five Palestinian fighters inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, in the midst of one of the largest assaults on the occupied territory for months.

The overall toll of 16 Palestinians killed in less than two days would make it the deadliest Israeli operation in the West Bank since the 7 October Hamas attack in Israel which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and ignited the Gaza war.

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Middle East crisis: Israeli troops claim five Palestinian militants killed at mosque in West Bank operation – as it happened

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Thursday’s attack follows major raids across the region which saw at least 10 Palestinians killed as part of an operation the military said could last days

Zainab Barakat woke early on Sunday morning to the sound of bombs. During more than 10 months of fighting between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) near her village of Zebqine, she had grown used to hearing the explosions that have devastated other nearby villages.

So far, Zebqine, almost 7km from the Lebanese-Israeli border, had been spared the worst of the shelling. But this time, she says, “it was right on top of us. It smashed the windows; the whole place shook. The children were panicking.”

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UN food agency suspends operations in Gaza after car hit by gunfire at Israeli checkpoint

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World Food Programme says it is the first time that one of its vehicles has been directly shot at near a checkpoint despite having security clearance

The UN’s food agency has said it is pausing movement of its staff in Gaza “until further notice” after one of its vehicles was struck by gunfire at an Israeli military checkpoint.

Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said of Tuesday’s incident: “This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of WFP’s team in Gaza.

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Joe Biden ordered Gaza pier to be built despite fears of aid experts

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Report by US Agency for International Development into $230m pier paints scathing picture of a failed project

Joe Biden declared the US intention to build a pier off the coast of Gaza as a means of delivering food despite advice to the contrary from aid experts in his administration, according to an official investigation into the ill-fated project.

A new report by the inspector general of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), which was responsible for delivering food to Gaza by the pier, paints a scathing picture of a failed project, in which political and security imperatives outweighed humanitarian considerations.

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Middle East crisis: 10 Palestinian militants killed in major West Bank raids; US announces new sanctions against Israeli settlers – as it happened

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Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators were meeting in Doha on Wednesday for “technical/working level” talks on a ceasefire in Gaza, a source with knowledge of the meeting told Reuters without giving further details.

At least 40,534 Palestinians were killed and 93,778 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, health authorities said on Wednesday.

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Middle East crisis: Gaza hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi rescued in ‘complex operation’, says IDF – as it happened

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The Biden administration remains in an intense phase of Middle East diplomatic activity working to avoid a regional war while optimistically spinning the prospects for a Gaza breakthrough deal.

Following the latest round of provocative Israeli extrajudicial killings in Tehran and Beirut and the intensified exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend, the region appeared to lurch further in the direction of all-out war. Preventing that is a worthy cause in itself.

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Israeli Bedouin kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October reunited with his family

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Israeli forces spoke of Qaid Farhan Alkadi’s rescue from tunnel though some reports suggest he may have initially escaped

A member of Israel’s Bedouin minority who was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October last year has been reunited with his family amid conflicting accounts about his rescue from Gaza.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had rescued Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, who was abducted in the Hamas attack while he had been working as a security guard at a packing factory on a kibbutz.

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Gaza polio vaccine rollout hindered by Israeli evacuation orders, says UN

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Aid workers preparing to distribute medicine to children in effort to contain outbreak call for pause in fighting

The UN has said its ability to function in Gaza is being crippled by a flurry of Israeli evacuation orders, forcing Palestinians into ever smaller and more remote areas, days before a critical effort to contain a polio outbreak.

Aid workers warn that without a humanitarian pause, a vaccination drive due to begin this weekend could fail to reach enough children to stop the spread of the virus, which was detected there this month for the first time in 25 years. A baby has already been partly paralysed by the disease, and health experts have warned it could spread rapidly given the terrible sanitation and overcrowding in camps for Gaza’s exhausted, displaced population.

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Zomi Frankcom’s brother calls for those responsible for her death in Israeli airstrike to be prosecuted

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Mal Frankcom says he wants people behind strike that killed seven people to be ‘tried and convicted and punished’

The brother of the Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, has called for those responsible for his sister’s death to be prosecuted and punished.

Frankcom, a 43-year-old from Melbourne who was working in Gaza with World Central Kitchen, was one of seven people killed in April when a convoy of cars was hit by an Israeli airstrike.

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Netanyahu says attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon ‘not the end of the story’

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Israeli air raids on rocket sites are part of dangerous rise in hostilities, increasing fears a major conflict could erupt

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israeli air raids targeting Hezbollah rockets in southern Lebanon in the early hours of Sunday morning were “not the end of the story”, after the two sides exchanged their heaviest fire since the war in Gaza began, raising fears of an all-out regional conflict.

The Israeli prime minister did not specify what further action, if any, was planned after the intense exchanges but he suggested Israel’s moves would be aimed at “changing the situation in the north”.

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Attorney general intervenes in Foreign Office review of weapons sales to Israel

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Exclusive: Richard Hermer tells officials he can’t approve decision to ban arms without knowing if their use would breach international law

Keir Starmer’s most senior legal adviser has intervened in the contentious decision over whether to ban UK arms sales to Israel, the Guardian has learned, as officials struggle to distinguish between “offensive” and “defensive” weapons.

Sources say Richard Hermer, the attorney general, has told Foreign Office officials he will not approve a decision to ban some weapons sales until they can say for sure which could be used to break international humanitarian law.

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Israel and Hezbollah trade strikes as Hamas plays down talk of imminent ceasefire deal in Gaza – as it happened

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IDF launches waves of what it calls ‘pre-emptive’ strikes into Lebanon as Hezbollah fires hundreds of rockets in major escalation of tensions

Circling back to Lloyd Austin and Yoav Gallant speaking, the Pentagon said the US defence secretary reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to Israel’s defence.

Reuters reports that a Pentagon readout of the call said Austin spoke with the Israeli defence minister “to discuss Israel’s defence against Lebanese [Hezbollah] attacks”.

Secretary Austin reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s defence against any attacks by Iran and its regional partners and proxies.

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Israeli airstrikes kill at least 36 Palestinians in southern Gaza

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Deaths reported by Gaza health workers come as delegations gather in Egypt for ceasefire talks

Multiple Israeli airstrikes killed at least three dozen Palestinians in southern Gaza, health workers said Saturday, as officials including a Hamas delegation gathered for ceasefire talks in Egypt.

Among the dead were 11 members of a family, including two children, after an airstrike hit their home in Khan Younis, according to Nasser hospital.

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Baby in Gaza partly paralysed from polio in territory’s first case for 25 years

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WHO says infant in stable condition as it prepares to vaccinate more than 640,000 children amid war

A Palestinian baby in Gaza has been partly paralysed from polio in the first case there for 25 years, amid preparations for a difficult and dangerous vaccination campaign in the midst of war.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, confirmed that the affected infant had lost movement in his lower left leg, but was in a stable condition.

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Israel-Gaza war: Israeli forces claim to have killed prominent Hezbollah member in attack on Lebanon’s Ayta al-Jabal – as it happened

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IDF says it has killed Muhammad Mahmoud Najam in attack in southern Lebanon

The Lebanon Health Ministry said one adult and one child were killed in an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon, Haaretz is reporting.

Lufthansa will resume flights to Amman in Jordan and Erbil in Iraq starting 27 August, Reuters is reporting.

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US officials say Gaza ceasefire ‘in sight’ but Israel and Hamas downbeat

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Warring sides indicate breakthrough not imminent as renewed fighting rages in parts of Palestinian territory

US officials have expressed optimism that a ceasefire deal in the war in Gaza “is in sight”, despite growing indications from Israel and Hamas that a breakthrough is not imminent and as renewed fighting rages in parts of the Palestinian territory.

Washington has put pressure on both parties to accept a bridging proposal suggested during internationally mediated talks in Qatar last week, dispatching the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on his ninth visit to the region since the conflict broke out 10 months ago. The latest round of negotiations, in which Hamas is not directly participating, were scheduled to restart in Cairo by Thursday but appear to have been postponed.

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