Food and other crucial supplies dangerously low in Gaza, say international aid groups
With no electricity, supplies, 'hospitals risk turning into morgues': Red Cross official
Warning: This story contains disturbing details.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) warned on Thursday that crucial supplies were running dangerously low in the Gaza Strip after Israel imposed a total blockade on the territory following deadly Hamas attacks.
"It's a dire situation in the Gaza Strip that we're seeing evolve with food and water being in limited supply and quickly running out," said Brian Lander, the deputy head of emergencies at WFP.
"WFP is on the ground and is responding and we're providing food to thousands of people that have sought shelter in schools and elsewhere across the territory. But we're going to run out very soon," he told Reuters.
"The situation is devastating," Samer Abdeljaber of the WFP told CBC's Power and Politics from Jerusalem Wednesday. He said bakeries had already stopped producing bread because of the lack of electricity. "People's lives are at stake. We need to ensure that people are protected."
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Abdeljaber, who oversees WFP operations in Gaza, said teams were able to get bread and canned foods to people in shelters over the past three days, but that that would change by Thursday as supplies dwindle.
"Basic food assistance will be very difficult to provide," he said.
Israel has said nothing will be allowed into Gaza until Hamas militants free some 150 hostages taken during their deadly weekend incursion.
It has halted all deliveries of food, water, fuel and electricity to Gaza's 2.3 million people and prevented entry of supplies from Egypt.
"Not a single electricity switch will be flipped on, not a single faucet will be turned on, and not a single fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home," Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz said on social media.
A senior official with the the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that lack of electricity could cripple hospitals, as he called for Hamas to release hostages.
"As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can't be taken," said Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC's regional director.
"Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues."
Ambulance crews carrying bodies from the rubble of demolished buildings to the morgue at Gaza's biggest hospital, al-Shifa, found no space left. Dozens of bodies in body bags were lined up in the hospital parking lot.
Fourteen health facilities have been damaged in strikes, health officials said Thursday. "The situation is very critical," said al-Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Selmia. "We've never seen days in Gaza like what we see now."
Al-Shifa has only enough fuel to keep power on for three days, said Matthias Kannes, a Gaza-based official for Doctors Without Borders. The group said the two hospitals it runs in Gaza were running out of surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a reconstructive surgeon at al-Shifa, said he had 50 patients waiting to go to the operating room.
"We're already beyond the capacity of the system to cope," he said. The health system "has the rest of the week before it collapses, not just because of the diesel. All supplies are running short."
A strike Thursday afternoon in the Jabaliya refugee camp took down a residential building on families sheltering inside, killing at least 45 people, Gaza's Interior Ministry said. At least 23 of the dead were under the age of 18, including a month-old child, according to a list of the casualties. Neighbours said a second house was hit at the same time, but the toll was not immediately known.
"We can't flee because anywhere you go, you are bombed," one neighbour, Khalil Abu Yahia, said. "You need a miracle to survive here."
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
'We are responsible,' says one Israeli minister
Brewing anger over Israeli military and intelligence failures in the surprise attack is being directed at Netanyahu's far-right government, which for months advanced a contentious legal overhaul that divided the country and affected the military.
In what appeared to be a first admission of fault from a government member, Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch told Israeli news outlet Ynet: "We are responsible. I, as a member of the government, am responsible. We were dealing with nonsense."
Israel's public diplomacy minister quit, the first fissure in Netanyahu's government since the onslaught.
In Tel Aviv on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged America's support for Israel as the Israeli military pulverized the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip with airstrikes and prepared for a possible ground invasion.
Blinken detailed some of the U.S. support so far, including working with Israel to try to secure the release of the hostages taken by the Palestinian militant group.
Scores of aircraft are heading to U.S. military bases around the Middle East, and a second warship departs for the eastern Mediterranean on Friday. Special operations forces are assisting Israel's military in planning and intelligence.
"You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourselves, but as long as America exists, you will never have to," said Blinken. "We will always be there by your side."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Blinken for the U.S. support and compared Hamas to the Islamic State group.
"Just as ISIS was crushed, Hamas will be crushed," he said.
But Blinken also stressed that every precaution should be taken to avoid civilian casualties in the fighting that lies ahead.
"We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard, even when it's difficult," he said.
Asked about images the Israeli government showed him of Hamas atrocities, including of a baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded and young people burned alive in their cars or hideaways, Blinken called it "depravity in the worst imaginable way" that "defies comprehension."
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters separately on Thursday that forces "are preparing for a ground manoeuvre if decided" in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas. A ground offensive in Gaza, the first since the 2014 war, would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal house-to-house fighting.
Iran warns war could expand
Iran's foreign affairs minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said Thursday that if Israel's bombardment of Gaza continues, the war may open on "other fronts," an apparent reference to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Amir-Abdollahian arrived in Beirut late Thursday evening, where he was greeted by representatives of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, along with Lebanese officials.
"In light of the continued aggression, war crimes, and siege on Gaza, opening other fronts is a real possibility," Amir-Abdollahian said, speaking to journalists on his arrival.
The war was ignited by a bloody and wide-ranging Hamas attack in Israel on Saturday.
Hamas officials have denied that Iran was directly involved in planning the attack or green-lighted it, and to date no government worldwide has offered direct evidence that Iran orchestrated the attack. However, many have pointed to Iran's long sponsorship of Hamas that has included training, funding and providing it with weapons.
The attack and the response have so far claimed more than 2,800 lives — of Israelis, Palestinians and citizens of other countries, including Canada. Blinken said 25 Americans are known to have been killed.
As Israel pounds Gaza from the air, Hamas militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel.
Amid concerns that the fighting could spread in the region, Syrian state media reported that Israeli airstrikes on Thursday hit international airports in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and in the northern city of Aleppo, putting them out of service.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli military position and claimed to have killed and wounded troops.
Israel targets Hamas leadership
The Israeli military said more than 1,300 people, including 222 soldiers, were killed in the weekend attack in Israel.
Israel says roughly 1,500 Hamas militants have been killed inside Israel, and that hundreds of the dead inside Gaza are Hamas members.
The death toll from Israeli strikes on Gaza rose to 1,537, including 500 under the age of 18, the Gaza-based Health Ministry reported Thursday.
The Israeli military said overnight strikes Thursday targeted Hamas's elite Nukhba forces, including command centres used by the fighters who attacked Israel on Saturday, and the home of a senior Hamas naval operative that it said was used to store unspecified weapons.
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Israeli strikes demolished two multi-storey houses on top of residents without warning, killing and wounding "a large number" of people, mainly civilians. Hamas has threatened to kill Israeli hostages if Israel strikes Palestinian civilians without warning.
Palestinians fleeing airstrikes in Gaza could be seen running through the streets Thursday, carrying their belongings and looking for a safe place.
Militants in Gaza are holding an estimated 150 people taken hostage from Israel — soldiers, men, women, children and older adults — and they have fired thousands of rockets into Israel over the past five days.
In Israel, opposition leader Benny Gantz, a former defence minister and political opponent of Netanyahu, joined a new wartime cabinet at a time when the Israeli military appears increasingly likely to launch a ground offensive into Gaza.
Israel has mobilized 360,000 reservists, massed additional forces near Gaza and evacuated tens of thousands of residents from nearby communities. Israel's El Al Airlines said it would operate flights this Saturday from New York and Thailand to bring back reservists, the first time in 40 years it would fly on the Jewish Sabbath.
Egypt crossing still inaccessible
The Egyptian government rejected an American proposal to allow Palestinians fleeing Israel's bombardment to leave Gaza, a senior Egyptian official said early Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Egypt believes that Palestinians leaving Gaza through its Rafah crossing would harm the Palestinian cause, and its state-run media reported that the Israeli offensive is part of a scheme to empty the enclave.
In the West Bank, Israeli settlers attacked a village south of Nablus, opening fire on Palestinians and killing three, the territory's health ministry said. More than two dozen Palestinians have died in fighting in the West Bank since the weekend.
With files from The Associated Press and CBC News