Middle East crisis live: Aid entering Gaza is lowest in months, says Unrwa, as US deadline approaches | World news

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed 3,287 people and injured 14,222 since 7 October 2023, the Lebanese health ministry has said, adding that 44 people in Lebanon had been killed and 88 others injured on Monday alone.

Hezbollah, the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group, began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 7 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

The Israeli military unleashed its assault on Lebanon in October, claiming its aim was to return tens of thousands of people evacuated from homes in northern Israel due to the cross-border hostilities.

British surgeon talks of ‘collective punishment’ of Palestinians in Gaza

Geneva Abdul

Geneva Abdul is a reporter for the Guardian

In the UK, Dr Nizam Mamode, a general, vascular and transplant surgeon who travelled to Gaza in August, has told MPs of “collective punishment” in Israel’s war in Gaza that has seen more than 43,000 civilians killed by Israeli forces.

Giving evidence to the International Development Committee on Tuesday, Dr Mamode told MPs of the deliberate targeting by Israeli forces on children, the lack of medical and general supplies in the territory and the deliberate targeting of healthcare infrastructure and aid workers.

When asked by MP Sarah Champion if he regarded what he saw as genocide, Dr Mamode said:

I’m not a international human rights lawyer so I can’t talk about the absolute definitions but it’s difficult to find another word for it given what we’ve seen, and I certainly feel the Palestinians feel that is what is happening to them.

He added: “In a word, yes.”

In October, the Guardian spoke with Mamode upon his return to the UK. For a month he volunteered at Gaza’s Nasser hospital as part of a medical team with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). He described the territory as “postapocalyptic” and said that aid workers and journalists were deliberate targets.

When asked about deliberate targeting of health workers and facilities by the panel on Tuesday, Mamode said: “To my mind it can’t be anything other than collective punishment, it’s just a consistent attempt to essentially wipe out a large part of the population.”

Also speaking before the panel was Sam Rose, a senior deputy director for Unrwa affairs. Rose described the recent Israeli ban on the UN aid organisation as “devastating”.

“It will be devastating,” said Rose, adding that no other organisation has the scale or scope to provide for Gaza’s 1.9mn residents as Unrwa does. The agency provides food aid, shelter, sanitation, water management and public health services in Gaza, which already faces widespread shortages of food, water and medicine.

When asked by MPs of the limited aid entering the territory, Nebal Faraskh from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said “Israel is still obstructing the entry of humanitarian aid”.

“The humanitarian situation is only deteriorating and the healthcare system is continuing to collapse,” she said. For more than 40 days, no aid, including food, water and medical supplies has reached northern Gaza, she said, where there are no ambulances operating, she added.

Since May, only 65 of the organisation’s aid trucks have entered the territory, she said. Nineteen PRCS members she said were killed, as she called for protections for healthcare facilities and workers.

“Unfortunately based on figures from last month, we are only receiving less aid from the previous month,” said Faraskh. “The situation is beyond catastrophe, it’s unimaginable.”

When asked of the US aid ultimatum delivered on 13 October, which expires today, Rohan Talbot, advocacy director for MAP, said “Israel is not acting in good faith with regards to its obligations”. Talbot said 42 aid trucks are entering the territory daily, compared to nearly 500 before the conflict. “Israel is not complying with what is being demanded of them by the US,”he added.

Air raid sirens have been heard in Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial capital, with the Israeli military saying it had intercepted three projectiles fired from Lebanon.

“Following the sirens that sounded in numerous areas in central Israel, the IAF (Israel Air Force) intercepted three projectiles that crossed from Lebanon,” the army said. media reported that sirens were also activated at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, where flights were temporarily halted. It is Israel’s main airport.

UN peacekeepers have warned that the Israeli military has committed “severe violations” of a ceasefire deal with Syria as its military continues a major construction project along the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria.

The comments from the UN Disengagement Observer Force, which has patrolled the area since 1974, come after an Associated Press report on Monday that published satellite imagery showing the extent of the works along the frontier.

The work, which UNDOF said began in July, follows the completion by the Israeli military of new roadways and what appears to be a buffer zone along the Gaza Strip’s frontier with Israel. The Israel military also has begun demolishing villages in Lebanon, where other UN peacekeepers have come under fire.

While such violence hasn’t broken out along the Alpha Line, UNDOF warned on Tuesday the work risked further inflaming tensions in the region. “Such severe violations of the (demilitarized zone) have the potential to increase tensions in the area and is being closely monitored by by UNDOF,” it added.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Syrian officials have declined to comment on the construction.

Lebanon’s health ministry has just said that five people died in the Israeli strike in the mountains east of Beirut, after a security official said a house was targeted.

“The Israeli enemy strike on Baalshamieh killed five people,” the ministry said in an initial report.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee has again issued a forced evacuation order for residents of southern Lebanon, this time saying people in the affected villages must move north of the Awali river, which meets the coast about 50km (30 miles) from the border with Israel. He prohibited residents from fleeing south.

The order was aimed at the villages of Chaqra, Hula, Majdal Selem, Taloussa, Meiss el-Jabal, as-Sawana, Qabrikha, Yahmour, Arnoun, Blida, Muhaibib, Barashit, Fron and Ghandouriya.

In a post on X, Adraee wrote:

Hezbollah’s terrorist activities force the IDF to act forcefully against it in these areas, and we do not intend to harm you. For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move to the north of the Awali river. For your safety, you must evacuate without delay. Anyone who is near Hezbollah elements, facilities or weapons is putting his life in danger.

A Lebanese security official has told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that an Israeli airstrike hit a villa east of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday.

The security official said the “Israeli strike caused an unspecified number of casualties”. The country’s state-run National News Agency later said Israeli warplanes hit a house between Baalshamieh and Dhour al-Abadiyah. Details of the attack are still emerging. We will give you the latest developments as soon as we get them.

The UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) has warned that already low levels of aid trickling into Gaza had dwindled further, with the situation in the north of the territory described as “catastrophic”.

The warning came as the Israeli military said it had delivered hundreds of packets of food to cut-off areas of northern Gaza as the deadline for Israel to get more aid into the Strip or face cuts in military assistance fast approaches (the US government said in a letter on 13 October that Israel had 30 days to take specific steps to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza).

Asked about whether there were signs the situation had improved ahead of Wednesday’s deadline, Louise Wateridge, an Unrwa emergencies officer, said “aid entering the Gaza Strip is at its lowest level in months” (see post at 11.29 for some of her other comments).

Speaking to a Geneva media briefing via video-link from Gaza, Wateridge said that “the average for October was 37 trucks a day into the entire Gaza Strip… that is for 2.2 million people”.

“Children are dying. People are dying every day,” she said, stressing that “people here need everything”.

The situation is at its worst in northern Gaza, where a UN-backed assessment at the weekend said that famine was imminent.

No food was permitted to enter besieged northern Gaza for an entire month, Wateridge said, adding that UN requests to access the area have been repeatedly denied.

Wateridge said that testimonies from the north painted “an endlessly horrific” picture that was becoming “more critical” by the hour, AFP reports.

“Hospitals have been bombed, the doctors inform us that they have run out of blood supplies, they have run out of medicine… there are bodies in the streets.”