Displaced Palestinians not guaranteed safety anywhere in Gaza, says UN official
Many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have followed Israeli army evacuation orders and sought safety in designated areas only to find there is little space left in the densely populated territory, a UN humanitarian team leader has said.
Gemma Connell, deployed in Gaza for several weeks now, described what she called a “human chessboard” in which thousands of people – displaced many times already – are on the run again and there is no guarantee a destination will be safe, Reuters reports.
Early on Tuesday, Palestinian residents reported several airstrikes near Nasser hospital, southern Gaza’s largest medical facility, in Khan Younis. Palestinian health officials said seven people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in the city.
Connell said on Monday:
People were heading up south with mattresses and all of their belongings in vans and in trucks and in cars in order to try and find somewhere safe.
Connell’s comments came as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the offensive in Gaza “isn’t close to finished” and that “we are expanding the fight in the coming days”.
Connell, a team leader for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs who on Monday visited the Deir al-Balah neighbourhood in central Gaza, said:
I’ve spoken to many people. There’s so little space left here in Rafah that people just don’t know where they will go and it really feels like people being moved around a human chessboard because there’s an evacuation order somewhere.
People flee that area into another area. But they’re not safe there.
Asked for the army’s response, a spokesperson said the military had sought to evacuate civilians from areas of fighting but Hamas systematically attempted to prevent that effort. The army spokesperson said Hamas used civilians as human shields, an accusation the group denies.
Key events
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian people on Tuesday in a raid on a refugee camp near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry has said.
The two people – aged 17 and 31 – were shot dead in the Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron, the ministry said.
A resident from the camp told AFP that troops stormed the camp from its southern and northern entrances.
“The two men were killed just outside their homes,” he said.
The army did not offer an immediate comment to the claims.
The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory has said demolitions were reported this morning in Furush Beit Dajan in the West Bank and yesterday in Deir Ballut.
Iraq’s government has condemned overnight US air strikes on Iraqi military positions that it said killed one serviceman and injured 18 other people, calling them a “clear hostile act”.
The US carried out retaliatory air strikes on Monday in Iraq after a one-way drone attack earlier in the day by Iran-aligned militants that left one US service member in critical condition and injured two others, Reuters reports.
The government condemned the US strikes as “an unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty”.
US forces have repeatedly targeted sites used by Iran and its proxy forces in Iraq and Syria in response to dozens of attacks on American and allied forces in the region since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on 7 October.
The Japanese government will freeze assets and impose sanctions on payments and capital transactions on three senior Hamas members, the country’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, has said.
The three individuals were believed to be involved in the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel and in a position to use funds to finance such terrorist activities, the top Japanese government spokesperson said, according to Reuters.
The Israeli opposition leader and former prime minister, Yair Lapid, has again called for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to step down.
“Changing a prime minister in the middle of a war is not good. But the one in office is worse. He cannot continue,” Lapid was quoted by Al Jazeera as having told the Israeli news outlet GLZ Radio.
Speculation over whether Netanyahu can maintain his wartime coalition has been rife. Parties could walk away, potentially collapsing the government.
Netanyahu has been fiercely criticised for not taking responsibility for failing to prevent the 7 October attack.
Palestine Red Crescent Society says headquarters targeted
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has said some displaced people have been injured in artillery shelling that targeted the upper floors of the organisation’s headquarters in Khan Younis.
It added that thousands of internally displaced people are sheltering in the building.
The Israeli army recently said it was sending more ground forces, including combat engineers, to Khan Younis, Gaza’s second biggest city, to target Hamas militants above ground and in tunnels.
India’s navy has said it is deploying three warships and reconnaissance aircraft in the Arabian Sea to “maintain a deterrent presence” after a string of recent shipping attacks.
Three guided-missile destroyers as well as P8I long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft were being deployed following “the recent spate of attacks in the Arabian Sea”, it said in a statement late on Monday, Agence France-Presse reports.
The US accused Iran of carrying out a drone attack on Saturday on the MV Chem Pluto tanker 200 nautical miles (370km) off the coast of India, claims Iran’s foreign ministry dubbed “worthless”.
It was the first time Washington has openly accused Iran of directly targeting ships since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas, the militant group backed by Tehran, in Gaza.
In the Red Sea, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have carried out a string of drone and missile attacks in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The assaults prompted Washington to last week launch a US-led coalition involving joint patrols in Red Sea waters near Yemen to safeguard commercial traffic.
Here are some of the latest images coming in from the Gaza Strip and Israel over the newswires, after Gaza health officials said more than 100 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes overnight to Monday in Gaza.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is heckled by hostages’ families as he addresses parliament in this footage below.
As he vows during a speech to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza, relatives of the hostages interrupt him and call for their immediate return, shouting: “Now! Now!”
They boo Netanyahu as he says Israeli forces need “more time” to increase military pressure on Hamas, which he has argued will help to secure the captives’ release.
Later, protesters gathered near the defence ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv before a meeting of the war cabinet, holding posters demanding “Free our hostages now – at any cost!”.
On Monday, the opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said Israel needed to “bring the hostages home now”, adding that “we are not doing enough”, in comments that drew applause from hostages’ families.
The video is here:
Here’s video footage of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that hit the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, reportedly killing more than 70 Palestinians.
The overall toll for Sunday night was reportedly more than 100, making it one of the deadliest nights of the 11-week-old war.
Building were seen flattened as Palestinians searched through the rubble with bare hands. Bodies wrapped in white cloth were later seen outside the al-Aqsa hospital as relatives of the dead mourned.
Displaced Palestinians not guaranteed safety anywhere in Gaza, says UN official
Many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have followed Israeli army evacuation orders and sought safety in designated areas only to find there is little space left in the densely populated territory, a UN humanitarian team leader has said.
Gemma Connell, deployed in Gaza for several weeks now, described what she called a “human chessboard” in which thousands of people – displaced many times already – are on the run again and there is no guarantee a destination will be safe, Reuters reports.
Early on Tuesday, Palestinian residents reported several airstrikes near Nasser hospital, southern Gaza’s largest medical facility, in Khan Younis. Palestinian health officials said seven people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in the city.
Connell said on Monday:
People were heading up south with mattresses and all of their belongings in vans and in trucks and in cars in order to try and find somewhere safe.
Connell’s comments came as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the offensive in Gaza “isn’t close to finished” and that “we are expanding the fight in the coming days”.
Connell, a team leader for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs who on Monday visited the Deir al-Balah neighbourhood in central Gaza, said:
I’ve spoken to many people. There’s so little space left here in Rafah that people just don’t know where they will go and it really feels like people being moved around a human chessboard because there’s an evacuation order somewhere.
People flee that area into another area. But they’re not safe there.
Asked for the army’s response, a spokesperson said the military had sought to evacuate civilians from areas of fighting but Hamas systematically attempted to prevent that effort. The army spokesperson said Hamas used civilians as human shields, an accusation the group denies.
Opening summary
Welcome to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war on this 26 December. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a snapshot of the latest developments as it turns 7.50am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv.
Many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have followed Israeli army evacuation orders and sought safety in designated areas only to find there is little space left in the densely populated territory, a UN humanitarian team leader in Gaza has said.
Gemma Connell described a “human chessboard” in which thousands of people – displaced many times already – are on the run again and with no guarantee that any destination will be safe.
Her comments came as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the offensive in Gaza “isn’t close to finished” and that “we are expanding the fight in the coming days”.
Early on Tuesday, Palestinian residents reported several airstrikes near Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, while Palestinian health officials said seven people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the city.
More on those stories soon. In other news:
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Israeli airstrikes killed more than 100 Palestinians overnight to Monday in Gaza, health officials in the Hamas-run territory said. Twenty-three were killed in Khan Younis, medics said, while the territory’s health ministry said at least 70 Palestinians were killed in an airstrike targeting Maghazi in central Gaza. Associated Press reported later that at least 106 were killed in the attack on the Maghazi refugee camp. Eight people were killed as Israeli planes and tanks carried out dozens of airstrikes on houses and roads in al-Bureij and al-Nuseirat, health officials said.
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Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad have rejected an Egyptian plan proposing that they give up power in the Gaza Strip in return for a permanent ceasefire, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters. Both groups, which have been holding separate talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo, rejected offering any concessions beyond the possible release of more of the hostages seized on 7 October.
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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) says Israel “will pay” for killing one of its commanders, Iranian state TV reports. The Tasnim news agency and Reuters said earlier that an airstrike killed Sayyed Razi Mousavi outside Syria’s capital, Damascus. He was an IRGC member responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran. The IRGC described Mousavi as a brigadier general who was one of their oldest advisers in Syria. The Israeli military declined to comment on the reports.
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Israeli strikes have killed 20,674 people and injured 54,536 in Gaza since 7 October, the territory’s health ministry said. It said on Monday that 250 Palestinians had been killed and 500 injured over the past 24 hours.
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The Israeli prime minister has vowed to expand the Gaza operation, saying the war “isn’t close to finished” and will take a long time. Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed what he cast as false media speculation that his government might call a halt to fighting against Hamas. “We are not stopping. We are continuing to fight, and we will be intensifying the fighting in the coming days, and the fighting will take long and it is not close to concluding,” he told legislators from his Likud party, according to a statement. Separately, Netanyahu told Israel’s parliament that Israel would not succeed in freeing the remaining hostages held in Gaza without military pressure.
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Family members of hostages taken by Hamas heckled Netanyahu during a special session of parliament. They shouted “there is no time” and “now, now, now” while holding posters and signs with the names and photos of their relatives. The prime minister said he would “shake every tree and turn every stone to bring back all the kidnapped”.
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The World Health Organisation said it led missions to barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza at the weekend, describing growing desperation and starving people stripping an aid vehicle of supplies. The UN health agency and its partners delivered aid, including fuel, to the al-Shifa hospital, once Gaza’s biggest and most advanced medical facility, the WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said late on Sunday on X (formerly Twitter). The mission on 23 December witnessed “rising desperation due to acute hunger”, he said.
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Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, has accused the UN of “hypocrisy” and ordered his ministry not to extend one UN employee’s entry visa and to refuse entry for another.
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Pope Francis said in his Christmas message that Israeli strikes in Gaza were reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent civilians and that was pleading for an end to the military operations. The pontiff called “for a solution to the desperate humanitarian situation by an opening to the provision of humanitarian aid” as he spoke to thousands of people gathered at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
