Successive Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza have displaced 90% of its 2.1 million residents since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, the top U.N. humanitarian official for the Palestinian territory says.
A crucial sticking point involves Israel’s demand for lasting control over two strategic corridors in Gaza.
It is the first internationally confirmed polio case in Gaza in 25 years.
WHO and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF are working with the Gaza ministry to implement two rounds of polio vaccination, four weeks apart, the U.N. humanitarian office said.
The key is agreement for humanitarian pauses from Israel, Hamas and other militants in Gaza.
More than 100 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, including dozens who are presumed dead.
Israel’s military said early Friday that it had killed “dozens” of militants during close-quarters fighting Thursday in the central and southern Gaza Strip.
Israel’s evacuation orders have displaced 90% of Gaza residents, UN says UNITED NATIONS — Successive Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza, including 12 just in August, have displaced 90% of its 2.1 million residents since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, the top United Nations humanitarian official for the Palestinian territory says.
Since the Israel-Hamas war started in October, 90 percent of Gaza’s 21.1 million residents have been forced to flee their homes due to successive Israeli evacuation orders. This is the top U.S. N. According to a Palestinian territory humanitarian official.
You. S. In Gaza, where the International Rescue Committee reports that the polio virus is spreading for the first time in 25 years due to the destruction of hospitals and water infrastructure as well as crowded living conditions, Vice President Kamala Harris says she and President Joe Biden are working to end the war.
Concluding the cease-fire negotiations in Cairo, White House national security spokesman John Kirby stated on Friday that they are going well and will carry on into the weekend. Mediating the discussions are the US, Qatar, and Egypt. One major point of contention is Israel’s insistence on having permanent authority over two vital Gazan corridors.
On October 1, the war broke out. 7, when militants led by Hamas invaded Israel, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapping about 250 more. There are currently about 110 hostages inside Gaza, with about one-third thought to be dead. Over forty thousand Palestinians have died in Gaza as a result of the Israeli offensive, although the number of militants and civilians killed is not specified by the local Health Ministry.
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U. Not N. seeks humanitarian cease-fires in Gaza to support the polio vaccination campaign.
UNITEETH — In response to the World Health Organization’s confirmation that a 10-month-old unvaccinated baby has polio and is partially paralyzed, the UN is intensifying its call for humanitarian ceasefires in the fighting in Gaza so that over 600,000 children can receive the polio vaccine.
In 25 years, this is Gaza’s first case of polio that has been verified internationally. In a social media post on Friday, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that the infant in central Deir al-Balah had become paralyzed in his lower left leg. The case was previously verified by the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
WHO and the U.S. Not N. Working with the Gaza Ministry, the children’s organization UNICEF is implementing two rounds of polio vaccination, separated by four weeks. Not N. Humanitarian office stated.
The crucial element is the understanding between Israel, Hamas, and other militant groups in Gaza regarding humanitarian pauses. I. N. . The talks are still ongoing, according to spokesman Stephane Dujarric. “.
He stated that although several trucks with refrigeration units to maintain the vaccines’ temperature have reached Gaza, the shots have not yet been distributed.
The USA. N. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs further stated that approximately 150 locations where displaced Palestinians had sought refuge were included in the three Israeli evacuation orders that were issued on Wednesday and Thursday, affecting fifteen neighborhoods in Deir al-Balah and southern Khan Younis.
OCHA reports that Israel has ordered thirteen evacuations in August alone.
According to state media, seven people are injured in Syria as a result of Israeli strikes.
DAMASCUS, Syria — According to Syrian official media, Israeli strikes on Friday injured seven civilians in central Syria.
The attacks targeted “a number of sites,” without identifying which ones, according to the state-run SANA news agency, which cited an unidentified military official. Some of the missiles were shot down by air defense systems.
The attacks targeted locations in the provinces of Homs and Hama, including a weapons depot and a fuel storage connected to the Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah, according to the opposition-affiliated Syrian Network for Human Rights, a war monitor.
From Israel, no statement was released right away.
You. s. argues that the cease-fire negotiations have been fruitful.
CALABASH, Calif. John Kirby, a spokesman for national security at the White House, stated on Friday that the cease-fire negotiations in Cairo have been fruitful and will go on throughout the weekend.
Kirby refuted reports that the negotiations are about to break down because of significant disagreements between Israel and Hamas over Israel’s demand that it keep troops in two vital Gaza corridors. Leading the U.S. effort are CIA Director William Burns and Brett McGurk, President Joe Biden’s senior Middle East advisor. S. side in the talks.
Kirby stated, “We now need for both sides to get together and work towards implementation. There has been progress made.”. “.
Kirby did not specify which areas of the discussions the U.S. s. has experienced advancement.
Netanyahu meets with the families of the hostages.
JERUSALEM: The relatives of the Israeli hostages detained in the Gaza Strip met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, expressing their frustration over his inability to reach a cease-fire agreement that would enable the release of their loved ones from Hamas custody.
A group advocating for the families of hostages kidnapped in October is called the Hostages Family Forum. Netanyahu stated, “I will do everything within my power to bring their family members back alive,” following the July 7 attack on Israel.
The son of hostage Oded Lifshitz, whose mother was abducted and freed by Hamas last October, Yizhar Lifshitz stated, “The word ‘alive’ limits this to a certain time frame.”.
With several dozen hostages thought to be dead, there are still over 100 Israelis held captive in Gaza.
Six captives’ bodies were recently removed from an underground tunnel in southern Gaza by Israeli troops. There is now more domestic pressure on Netanyahu to approve a cease-fire after it was revealed on Thursday that the bodies were covered in bullet wounds.
Netanyahu holds Hamas responsible for the impasse in the talks.
According to state media, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have claimed the lives of at least seven people, including a child.
BEIRUT: According to state media, five Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon on Friday resulted in the deaths of at least eight people, including a child and multiple Hezbollah militants.
A seven-year-old child and another person were killed by a drone strike in the town of Aita al-Jabal, according to the Lebanese health ministry. According to the Israeli military, Mohammad Mahmoud Najem, a member of Hezbollah’s drone and rocket unit, was killed in the strike.
Later on Friday, Hezbollah declared the deaths of four more members in addition to confirming Najem’s passing.
Pictures from the location revealed a tiny pickup truck that had caught fire.
For over a year now, Hezbollah, a militant organization in Lebanon, has been engaged in almost daily combat with Israeli forces in the border region. More than 500 people have died as a result of the fighting in Lebanon, the majority of whom were militants but there were also over 100 civilians and noncombatants, and in Israel, there have been 26 civilian deaths and 23 soldiers.
Lufthansa will resume service to Amman and Irbil but has extended flight suspensions to several destinations in the Middle East.
BERLIN — German carrier Lufthansa announced on Friday that it has prolonged the suspension of flights to a number of Middle Eastern locations, but that it will start operating again to Amman and Irbil on August. 27. .
Flights to and from Tel Aviv and Tehran will be suspended by the Lufthansa Group, which also comprises Austrian Airlines and Swiss, the company said, through September. 2. . There will be no more flights to or from Beirut until September. 30-31. According to the statement, flights to Irbil would use “a northern corridor in Iraqi airspace.”.
Prior to August, there were no flights to any of these locations. 26.
The head of WHO reports that a Palestinian child who contracted polio is partially paralyzed.
Geneva — The World Health Organization’s director-general reports that a Palestinian child who has been infected with polio, the first case in Gaza in 25 years, has partially paralyzed himself.
The 10-month-old child experienced paralysis in his lower left leg, but his condition is stable, according to a post made by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on X on Friday.
He expressed his deep concern.
Following testing by the WHO, samples from the afflicted child were shown to be connected to the variant detected in Gaza’s wastewater.
The WHO, based in Geneva, is collaborating with UNICEF and the Palestinian Health Ministry to administer two rounds of vaccinations at the end of August and September due to the high risk of its spread.
In order to complete the vaccination rounds, it is requesting that all sides impose humanitarian pauses in the fighting.
Following the start of the conflict on October 25, polio vaccination rates fell sharply after being completely eradicated in Gaza 25 years earlier. 7, and with hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians living in cramped tent camps without access to clean water or appropriate sewage and waste disposal, the region has turned into a breeding ground for the virus.
While mediators continue to press for a cease-fire agreement, Gaza awakens to gunfire.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza — On Friday, amid efforts by the US, Qatar, and Egypt to broker a cease-fire agreement, fighting persisted in the central Gaza Strip.
In a video taken by The Associated Press, heavy weapons and machine guns could be heard firing at dawn close to east Deir al-Balah, where the streets were almost completely empty. A spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defense, Mahmoud Bassal, stated that four people were killed in an early Israeli strike on their vehicle in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Late on Thursday, Bassal revealed that the Israeli military had carried out several strikes throughout the Gaza Strip the previous day, killing 24 people, including those in Khan Younis in the south and Gaza City in the north.
He added that multiple injuries were also caused by the strikes, but he did not say how many.
During tight combat on Thursday in the central and southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli military claimed early on Friday that it had killed “dozens” of militants. According to the report, during the past week, there have been strikes against areas from which projectiles were fired towards southern Israel in Khan Younis.
According to the military, the air force also hit about 30 targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including military outposts, locations for storing weapons, and launch pads close to Khan Younis.
According to Kamala Harris, Biden and she are attempting to put an end to the conflict in Gaza.
Chicago — The U. S. Kamala Harris, the vice president, concluded the Democratic National Convention by saying that she and Joe Biden are trying to put an end to the conflict in Gaza.
On Thursday, Harris declared that she would “always defend Israel’s right to self-defense.”. “.
“Yet, what has transpired in Gaza during the previous ten months is appalling,” she added. “Hungry and in a desperate situation, people keep running away from danger.”. My goal with President Biden is to put an end to this war. “.
A truce and the release of the hostages taken during the raid in October, she suggested, could put an end to the suffering.
The parents of one of the young men being held captive in Gaza spoke to the convention on Wednesday.
Ninety percent of Gazans have been forced to leave their homes due to Israel’s evacuation orders, according to the UN.
UN — According to the top UN humanitarian official for the Palestinian territory, 90 percent of Gaza’s 21.1 million inhabitants have been forced to flee their homes as a result of repeated Israeli evacuation orders, 12 of which were issued in August alone.
The evacuation orders, according to Muhannad Hadi, put civilians in danger rather than preventing it. The area is getting smaller and more crowded, and families are being forced to escape frequently under fire, taking only the minimal possessions they can carry with them.
He claimed that people are “running from one destroyed place to another, with no end in sight,” depriving them of humanitarian supplies, shelter, medical attention, and water wells.
According to Hadi’s statement on Thursday, civilian protection is mandated by international humanitarian law. “It is imperative that we agree on a cease-fire, free the hostages, protect civilians, and facilitate humanitarian access as the only viable course of action.”. “.
Additionally, the evacuations pose the most recent risk to U.S. Not N. humanitarian facilities are impacted by workers in Gaza, according to U.S. N. . Stephane Dujarric is the spokesperson. He gave the U.S. as an illustration. N. . The World Food Program’s warehouse in the heart of Deir al-Balah was lost.
Dujarric stated, “This was the third and last operational warehouse in the middle area of Gaza.”. “WFP also evacuated five of its community kitchens while looking for new locations for them. “.
