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gaza city
Palestinians Say US Responsible for Latest 'Massacre' of Children in Gaza
"U.S. funding of Israeli genocide is ballooning as the Israeli army uses ever more lethal bombs," said Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, said Sunday after bombing that killed 100 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza City.
Aug 11, 2024
The office of the Palestinian Authority's president is holding the U.S. government responsible for a weekend bombing in Gaza that killed an estimated 100 people, including at least 11 children. The victims of the attack on the al-Tabin school were blown to 'pieces,' according to video evidence and on-the-ground reporting, when U.S.-provided missiles were fired on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.
In the wake of the attack that stirred global outrage and condemnation Saturday, the Palestinian presidency's spokesperson Nabih Abu Rudeineh condemned the massacre and said the PA held the Biden administration "responsible for the massacre due to its financial, military, and political support for Israel."
Rudeineh demanded the U.S. pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease indiscriminate attacks that have left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead, wounded, and displaced over recent months. In addition, he said, the U.S. must conform to international law by ending its "blind support" to Israel "that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly."
As Common Dreams previously reported, the bombing of the al-Tabin school complex came just hours after the U.S. State Department announced the release of $3.5 billion in military aid for Israel and made new weapons transfers available to help refresh the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stockpiles.
"U.S. funding of Israeli genocide is ballooning as the Israeli army uses ever more lethal bombs," said Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, in an online post Sunday. "The ones used yesterday in the Al-Tabin School massacre sliced bodies to the point of making them unrecognizable. They are now identified by weight: 70kg bag = 1 adult. Revolting."
The head of Gaza's Government Media Office told Al Jazeera that the three bombs dropped on the school weighed 2,000 pounds each, matching the size of the MK-84 munitions provided by the thousands to the IDF by the United States over the last year.
"Another day of horror in Gaza, another school hit with reports of dozens of Palestinian killed among them women, children and older people,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), Saturday in response to the attack. "It's time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end. We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm. The more recurrent, the more we lose our collective humanity."
The UN human rights office said the latest attack was "at least the 21st strike on a school, each serving as a shelter, that the UN [the agency] has recorded since 4 July. These strikes have resulted in at least 274 fatalities, including women and children."
Responding to claims by the IDF that the bombing was aimed at militants it claimed were using the facility, OHCHR said in a statement that "co-location by armed groups of military objectives with civilians" does not release Israel from its "obligation to comply strictly with [international humanitarian law], including the principles of proportionality, distinction and precaution when carrying out military operations. Israel, as the occupying power, is obliged to provide the population it has forcibly displaced with basic humanitarian needs, including safe shelter."
Asked about the situation in Gaza on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, said during a campaign stop in Phoenix, Arizona that she and President Joe Biden have been working "around the clock" to secure a ceasefire deal that would see the fighting end and Israeli hostages held by Hamas returned safely.
Specifically about Saturday's bombing of the school complex, Harris said, "Yet again, far too many civilians have been killed."
"Yet again, there are far too many civilians who've been killed. Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas. But as I have said many, many times, they also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties."
-- Kamala Harris on Gaza pic.twitter.com/Ir0bysiFT9
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) August 10, 2024
Despite global outrage over Saturday's attack, the Israeli military overnight Sunday issued new evacuation orders for southern Gaza.
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Polio Outbreak Looms in Gaza Without Cease-Fire: WHO
"A cease-fire, or at least 'days of tranquility' during preparation and delivery of the vaccination campaigns, are required to protect children in Gaza from polio," said the director-general of the health agency.
Aug 07, 2024
Days after the Gaza Health Ministry declared the enclave a "polio epidemic zone," with poliovirus type 2 found in wastewater samples, the World Health Organization had a simple but urgent message Wednesday: Healthcare workers need a cease-fire to stop the devastating virus from spreading across Gaza and potentially across borders.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency was deploying more than 1 million polio vaccines to Gaza, but warned that Israel's continued bombings, forced displacement of Palestinians, and decimation of the healthcare system through its blocking of aid will prevent humanitarian workers from protecting people in the enclave.
"We need absolute freedom of movement for health workers and medical equipment to carry out these complex operations safely and effectively," said Tedros. "A cease-fire, or at least 'days of tranquility' during preparation and delivery of the vaccination campaigns, are required to protect children in Gaza from polio."
Tedros said the detection of polio in wastewater is "a telltale sign that the virus has been circulating in the community, putting unvaccinated children at risk."
Children under the age of 5—especially those younger than 2—are most at risk for polio, as healthcare providers have not been able to maintain normal vaccination schedules for children and babies since Israel began its assault on Gaza last October.
"We risk the virus spreading further, including across borders."
Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication for WHO's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, said in a news conference that no clinical cases of polio have been diagnosed so far.
But Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the organization, said that could rapidly change without a cease-fire.
"We risk the virus spreading further, including across borders," said Balkhy.
Mass vaccination campaigns have helped doctors to nearly eradicate polio in recent decades, with global cases declining by 99% since 1988. The virus is highly infectious and can affect the nervous system, causing paralysis.
WHO made its latest call for a cease-fire amid reports of intensified Israeli attacks on Khan Younis, where at least 11 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday, including at least one woman in an attack on a residential building.
The Israel Defense Forces ordered people to evacuate Beit Hanoun, reportedly ahead of planned attacks there. Israeli tanks also shelled the refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij.
Thousands of Palestinians were fleeing Beit Hanoun and other parts of northern Gaza on foot on Wednesday, according to Anadolu Agency, heading to Jabalia and Gaza City.
The assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week, as well as the killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli strike in Beirut, have raised concerns of a potential escalation in the conflict, which has killed at least 39,677 Palestinians since October.
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Entire Families Among Dozens of Bodies Recovered After Israel's Gaza City Onslaught
At least 120 bodies have been found in rubble, on streets, and in homes in two Gaza City neighborhoods in the last two days.
Jul 12, 2024
Gaza's Civil Defense reported Friday that the Israel Defense Forces left the bodies of at least 60 Palestinians in their wake after withdrawing from Gaza City's Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, where victims of the IDF's recent onslaught were found in rubble, on streets, and "burned inside their homes."
Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for Civil Defense in Gaza, told the Associated Press that "entire families" appeared to have been killed by artillery fire and airstrikes in the enclave's largest city, which was almost entirely destroyed in the first months of Israel's bombardment late last year but where many people had returned to their homes among the ruins.
Al Jazeera journalist Mohammad Alsaafin noted on social media that Patient's Friends Hospital had repaired damage from Israel's bombardment and had restarted its operations just two weeks before the IDF ordered an evacuation of several Gaza City neighborhoods ahead of its attacks on the city.
"It's been destroyed again," he said.
"At least 60 bodies were counted," Basal said of the Tal al-Hawa area. "Some bodies were buried on the spot. Others were taken to nearby hospitals. Many bodies are still under the rubble. The Israeli forces are stationed nearby and the rescue efforts are interrupted regularly."
He added, "Most of those killed are families, women, and children. Some bodies were eaten by dogs."
Fares Afaneh, an emergency official in northern Gaza, toldAl Jazeera that most of the bodies found in Tal al-Hawa were "decomposed due to the inability of ambulance crews to reach [them earlier]."
Rescue workers recovered the victims a day after at least 60 bodies were found throughout the city's Shuja'iyyah neighborhood, with many more believed to be under the rubble.
British union leader Howard Beckett said Western politicians including U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer—two of Israel's top supporters—are unlikely to speak out about the Gaza City communities that have been "obliterated" this week.
"They have given support for this racist genocide," said Beckett. "Arms embargo now."
Basal told the AP that many of those killed had left shelters in parts of the city that were under evacuation orders from Israel.
Staffers at al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza told humanitarian group ActionAid that they were treating an influx of patients from Gaza City "despite experiencing a critical lack of vital medical supplies, equipment, and fuel, which has forced them to postpone scheduled surgeries and rely on small generators to keep the facility running."
"The World Health Organization sent a small quantity of fuel a month ago which was sufficient [to keep the hospital running for one week only]," said Dr. Mohammed Salha, acting director of the hospital. "Now it has been more than a month that we haven't received fuel to operate the hospital... We hope that our partners from the World Health Organization and the United Nations organizations will [be able to] quickly supply the hospital with the fuel necessary for operation and provide the hospital with medical supplies and medicines so that we can keep providing our services to injured people."
"We do not know how long the [Israeli forces] will remain in Gaza City and the number of casualties we will receive at al-Awda Hospital," he added.
As Common Dreamsreported on Tuesday, hospitals in Gaza City were forced to shut down this week as the IDF launched an offensive there, and medical staff transported sick and injured people to already overcrowded medical centers in northern Gaza.
"Hospitals in Gaza are facing overwhelming demand, as they scramble to treat people wounded in Israeli attacks—many of whom have catastrophic and life-changing injuries—as well as ever-growing numbers of patients who are dangerously sick after months of living in inhumane, overcrowded, and unsanitary conditions without enough to eat," said Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at ActionAid Palestine. "At the same time, they are facing desperate shortages of vital medicines, equipment, and fuel, as well as food and water. More aid must be allowed into Gaza immediately so that hospital staff can continue their vital, life-saving work, and there must be a permanent cease-fire, now."
The casualties from the attacks on Gaza City were discovered as a senior Hamas official on Friday told Reuters that Israel is "stalling and wasting time" as the two sides work with mediators from the U.S. and Egypt to secure a cease-fire deal.
"Israel hasn't given a clear stance over [the] Hamas proposal," the official told Reuters, referring to a plan for a phased-in cease-fire with written guarantees from Israel that it will end the IDF's attacks in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Hamas has made demands that contradicted the current cease-fire framework, but did not specify what the demands were. Israeli officials also told Reuters on Thursday that "Netanyahu insists that Israel remains" along the Gaza-Egypt border.
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