The number of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza has risen to 18, medics said, while the Israeli military said it targeted gunmen operating from shelters and aid storages, Reuters reports.
At least 10 people were killed in an airstrike near the municipality building in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip where people gathered to receive aid, medics said.
Casualties were being carried by foot, on rickshaws and private cars from the site of the attack to the hospital, medics said. The strike killed the head of the administrative committee in central Gaza, the report adds citing a Hamas source.
The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 44,930 people have been killed in more than 14 months of Israeli bombardment in Gaza, AFP reports.
The toll includes 55 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 106,624 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began on October 7, 2023.
At least one person was killed as Palestinian security forces clashed with Palestinian fighters and set up checkpoints in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, residents and medics said, according to Reuters.
Gunshots and explosions could be heard in the city, where friction has risen in recent days between fighters and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas following raids by the PA.
Residents identified the man who was killed as a fighter though none of the factions immediately confirmed his affiliation.
The PA’s security branch said in a statement that its forces were undertaking a security operation to restore law and order to Jenin’s historic refugee camp suburb, a stronghold of Palestinian fighters alienated from the Palestinian leadership.
Jordan has condemned an Israeli airstrike on a residential block in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza that left more than 30 Palestinians dead, Anadolu reports.
In a statement, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry reiterated the “kingdom’s absolute rejection of Israel’s continued violations of international law and international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which ensures the protection of civilians during wartime.”
The ministry criticised the “systematic targeting of innocent civilians and the lack of international accountability for these attacks.”
It urged the international community to fulfil its legal and moral responsibilities by “compelling Israel to immediately halt its aggression against Gaza, hold those responsible accountable, and ensure justice for the Palestinian people.”
At least seven Palestinians have been killed and 12 wounded after an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza, the civil emergency service in Gaza City said, according to Reuters.
The dead include a woman and her baby, according to medics.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has discussed with visiting US officials efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostages-for-prisoners deal in the Palestinian enclave, Sisi’s office said, according to Reuters.
The officials who met Sisi in Cairo included US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk, it said.
UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has said that if the Israeli ban on the UN agency was implemented it would “mean the end of the UN operation in Gaza but also in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” while speaking in an interview on CNN.
The implementation of the Israeli ban on UNRWA’s operations in Gaza and the West Bank would “deprive hundreds of thousands of girls and boys — living currently in the rubble, deeply traumatised — to go back in a learning environment,” he said.
Six Palestinians have been killed and scores of others injured in Israeli airstrikes on residential homes and a school sheltering displaced families in various areas across the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.
In the North Gaza Governorate, medical sources reported that four Palestinians were killed and several others injured when an Israeli warplane struck a home in Jabalia Nazla.
In Gaza City, two Palestinians were killed, and several others injured when Israeli helicopters struck Yaffa School in the Tuffah neighbourhood, where displaced families were taking shelter, according to paramedics.
Israel has continued attacking schools, medical targets and homes across the Gaza Strip, killing and injuring several people just one day after dozens were massacred in a strike on Nuseirat camp, Al Jazeera reports.
Raids killed four members of the Saadallah family in their home in Jabalia.
Israel also killed two people in a school northeast of Gaza City and one person sheltering in a tent south of Khan Younis, Palestinian news agency Wafa said.
United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) Executive Director Catherine Russell has urged action as children in the Gaza Strip face bloodshed daily, Anadolu Agency reports.
“The world cannot look away when so many children are exposed to daily bloodshed, hunger, disease, and cold,” Catherine Russell said in a statement yesterday.
“We urgently call on all parties to the conflict, and on those with influence over them, to take decisive action to end the suffering of children, to release all hostages, to ensure children’s rights are upheld, and to adhere to obligations under international humanitarian law.”
As part of its “genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”, Israel routinely targets medical teams in the north in an effort to destroy the health system as casualties from Israel’s bombardment pile up, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has said.
According to Euro-Med, the Israeli occupation army targeted Dr Saeed Joda on Thursday as he was travelling from Kamal Adwan Hospital to Al-Awda Hospital to treat patients.
“He was killed when a Quadcopter fired at him, striking him in the head and demonstrating that his killing was premeditated and deliberate, especially given that he was the only orthopaedic physician in the northern Gaza Strip,” it noted.
People mourn Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike, at a hospital in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on Dec 13, 2024. — Reuters
Israel attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia more than 20 times in the past 10 days, injuring several patients, medical personnel, and their companions, the statement highlighted. An Israeli drone targeted and killed Ali Al-Qar’a, a paramedic working in the area, on Dec 8, it added.
Euro-Med Monitor’s review of the Israeli military’s targeting records and victim lists revealed a “systematic, widespread policy of killing and assassinating Palestinian elites and those with competencies in various sectors”.
The number of Palestinian medical personnel who have been killed since Oct 7, 2023 is 1,057 and more than 135 scientists and academics have also been killed, the monitor stated.
California has apologised for allowing someone in the US state to register a license plate mocking the October 7 attacks on Israel, AFP reports.
The apology comes after activist group StopAntisemitism flagged a Tesla Cybertruck seen around Los Angeles sporting a plate that read “LOLOCT7”, which it said celebrated “terrorism against the Jewish people”.
LOL is a common abbreviation for “laughing out loud”. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said on social media on Thursday that it would be acting to rescind the plate, which fell foul of its own rules.
“This is unacceptable and disturbing,” the agency wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“The DMV is taking swift action to recall these shocking plates, and we will immediately strengthen our internal review process to ensure such an egregious oversight never happens again. “We sincerely apologise that these personalised plates were not properly rejected during our review process.”
The situation in the Gaza Strip is as dire as it has ever been, with thousands of children hospitalized due to acute malnutrition, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has warned, Anadolu Agencyreports.
Louise Wateridge, UNRWA’s senior emergency officer in the besieged coastal strip, told reporters in Geneva from central Gaza that the suffering and sadness are still ongoing.
She noted that Gaza now has the world’s highest number of child amputees, with many undergoing surgeries without anaesthesia.
Citing medical workers on the ground, the UNRWA official underlined that too many patients are dying from treatable illnesses due to a lack of medication and equipment.
Louise Wateridge, an official of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has reported seeing “absolutely horrific images” in Gaza as Israel continued its bombardment.
“We’ve seen absolutely horrific images from the scene. There are parents looking for their children [and] children covered in dust and blood, looking for their parents,” Wateridge said in a video shared by the UNRWA.
“They are undergoing surgeries without anaesthesia. I spoke to doctors at Nasser hospital — this is the largest semi-functioning hospital in the Gaza strip now — and they are absolutely beside themselves.”
A child looks on following an Israeli strike at a post office where people were sheltering, in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip, on Dec 12, 2024. — Reuters
A top US military officer visited Israel from Wednesday to Friday, meeting with Israeli defence officials and discussing the situation in Syria, among other regional topics, Reuters quotes the US Central Command (Centcom) as saying.
Army General Michael Kurilla, Centcom’s commander, met Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, along with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, Centcom said.
Katz has ordered Israeli troops to prepare to stay over the winter on Mount Hermon, a strategic location overlooking Damascus, adding to signs that Israel is planning a prolonged military presence in Syria.
“The leaders discussed a range of regional security issues, to include the ongoing situation in Syria, and preparedness against other strategic and regional threats,” the Centcom statement said.
Centcom said Kurilla also visited Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon in recent days.
Switzerland’s federal government has announced it is looking to ban the swastika, Hitler salute and other Nazi signs due to a rise in anti-Semitism, AFP reports.
The Federal Council said in a statement that “banning symbols linked to the Third Reich has taken on a particular urgency due to the sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents”.
It proposes an immediate ban on “the use of Nazi symbols in public” and imposing a fine of about 200 Swiss francs ($224) on anyone who breaks the law.
The Swiss penal code will be amended to punish anyone who uses “a racist, extremist, Nazi symbol or one that advocates violence in order to propagate the ideology it represents”.
Switzerland also wants to go further than banning the most well-known Nazi symbols, extending it to more cryptic signs of recognition used by supporters of Nazi ideology.
As such, the use of the “18” — the first and eighth letter of the alphabet signifying Adolf Hitler’s initials — and “88” — for “Heil Hitler” — will also fall foul of the proposed law.
“The context will play a decisive role in this case,” the Council said.
Exceptions are provided for educational, scientific, artistic or journalistic purposes but “within the limits of what freedom of expression allows”, it added.
Existing religious symbols which are identical or similar to Nazi symbols will not be affected.
Consultation on the proposed ban will run until March 31 next year and includes a separate future outlawing of “other extremist symbols”.
A Dutch court has thrown out a case by a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups aiming to stop the government from exporting arms to Israel, AFP reports.
“There is no reason to impose a total ban on the export of military and dual-use goods on the state,” said the court in The Hague. “All claims are dismissed.”
The NGOs had argued that Dutch authorities were neglecting to prevent what they termed an Israeli “genocide” in its military campaign in Gaza. “Israel is guilty of genocide and apartheid” and “is using Dutch weapons to wage war”, said Wout Albers, a lawyer representing the NGOs, during the hearings.
The lawyer for the Dutch State, Reimer Veldhuis, told the court the Netherlands had been applying European laws in force for arms exports and urged the court to toss out the case.
The court agreed with the Dutch government in every respect.
“The state has an obligation under international law to assess on a case-by-case basis whether the export of such goods is permissible on the basis of applicable regulations,” the judge said.
The Dutch authorities consider whether the goods exported to Israel could be used to breach international law, the court noted.
“If this risk exists, export is refused. The court finds that the state is fulfilling that obligation.”
The Gaza health ministry has said that at least 44,875 people have been killed in more than 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.
The toll includes 40 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 106,454 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned the brutal massacre carried out last night by Israeli occupation forces in the Nuseirat refugee camp, which resulted in the murder and injury dozens of Palestinians, alongside massive destruction of buildings, Wafareports.
The ministry described the attack as a direct consequence of the international community’s failure to implement its resolutions and commitments, which in turn encourages the occupation to escalate its crimes and continue its systematic destruction of Gaza. The aim, according to the ministry, is to transform Gaza into an uninhabitable zone, forcing its residents to migrate by force.
In a statement, the ministry noted that the ongoing destruction in northern Gaza and Gaza City, as documented by media outlets, is part of a deliberate policy to eradicate Palestinian life in the Strip.
This, it added, is an effort to undermine any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state and to reduce the Palestinian issue to a population problem in need of humanitarian aid.
Several Palestinians suffocated from tear gas after Israeli occupation forces violently suppressed a peaceful protest near Mount Sabih in the town of Beita, south of Nablus, Palestinian Wafa agency reports.
Local sources reported that Israeli forces attacked participants while they were performing the weekly Friday prayer ahead of an anti-colonisation protest in Beita, which opposes the seizure of their land for settlement expansion. The protest is held every week in defiance of Israeli occupation and settlement activity in the area.
Israeli soldiers fired sound bombs and tear gas at the protesters, leading to confrontations and causing a number of residents to suffer from tear gas inhalation.
A key parliamentary session in Westminster in London called on the British government to urgently grant medical visas for children from Gaza in need of treatment, Wafa agency reports.
Organised by the Association of the Palestinian Community in the UK (APC-UK) and hosted by the Independent Parliamentary Group, the session called for taking immediate action to address the dire situation faced by Gaza’s children amid the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Strip.
The session was opened by an Independent MP and moderated by the Chair of the Political Affairs Committee of the Palestinian community in the UK, with prominent speakers, including the director of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, the head of the Palestinian community in the UK, a senior campaigner from “War on Want”; an anti-poverty charity based in London and the Palestinian ambassador to the UK.
Osama Qashoo firmly believes in the power of boycotts and direct action to end Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Anadolu reports.
Along with his work on the ground, the Palestinian activist has been a prominent advocate of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for decades — “a big champion and an instigator,” as he puts it.
His new way of doing his part was driven by a question — “Boycott is easy, but what is the alternative product?” — and the answer came in the form of Gaza Cola.
The beverage has turned out to be a commercial success in the UK, to the point where the company is pursuing expansion to other geographies, and generates profits that go directly to funds for reconstruction projects in Gaza.
“The idea of Gaza Cola came to life to offer an alternative product that tastes familiar but allows people to act on their values. It also carries the Palestinian flag and represents resilience,” Qashoo told Anadolu in a conversation in London, where he oversees the company’s operations.
Three Palestinians were killed and several others injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a tent sheltering displaced individuals in Khan Younis of southern Gaza.
Medical sources told Anadolu that the airstrike hit a tent housing displaced members of the Jabour family in the Jouret Al-Lout area of southern Khan Younis.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that he discussed the imperative of Hamas’ saying yes to the Gaza ceasefire agreement in his talks with Turkiye’s President and Foreign Minister, Reuters reports.
“In my discussions with President Erdogan and with Minister Fidan we talked about the imperative of Hamas saying yes to the (Gaza) agreement that’s possible to finally help bring this to an end,” Blinken said, following his meeting with Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara.
“We appreciate very much the role that Turkiye can play in using its voice with Hamas, to try to bring this to conclusion.”
President Mahmoud Abbas met with Lebanese Prime Minister Mikati at his residence during his visit to Rome, where the two leaders discussed the latest developments in Palestine and Lebanon, Palestinian agency Wafareports.
The two leaders underscored the need to gather all efforts to ensure the success of the ceasefire in Lebanon, aiming to stabilise the situation and restore peace and security in the country.
The conversation also focused on achieving a comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza, facilitating humanitarian aid, and ensuring Israel’s full withdrawal from the region.
They stressed the importance of the State of Palestine taking on its responsibilities in Gaza in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2735.
